Further Side Conquests of an Accidental Stud Monkey
by OverMaster
Summary: Companion piece to Darkenning's upcoming Conquests II storyline! Sequel to Side Conquests! Guest starring the Unequally Rational and Emotional cast! The Unequally Mahorafest arc! Sasaki Makie's secret origin! Naughty stuff! Girls und Panzer! Negi versus Chao Lingshen! Kill La Kill! Tsukuyomi! Exclamation points! Lots of them! Disclaimer: URAE Negi won't have sex in this storyline.
1. Chapter 1

Akamatsu Ken and Kodansha created and own _Mahou Sensei Negima!_ despite consistently showing they have no fucking idea what to do with it.

Not that I'm much better, but still.

* * *

 **Further Side Conquests of an Accidental Stud Monkey**.

 **The Unequal Unfairness of It All**.

* * *

Based, once again, on a storyline by Darkenning.

* * *

 **Prelude**.

* * *

"There is something I would like to ask you," Akemi Homura said coldly. She might have been well aware she was starting the conversation in what had to be one of the worst possible ways. Or she might have not. No one ever said social skills were her strong point. Either way, she would have been unlikely to care whether she was or not.

"Then ask," Skuld Jottunsdottir sighed, with a quietly jaded air of resignation. By now she was beyond wondering why it seemed these conversations always seemed to start the same way.

For a moment, Akemi Homura silently pondered the black haired girl sitting across her and the curiously expectant Kaname Madoka, at the lunch table of the Kaname-Akemi residence. Her face was nearly featureless except for those large, deep purple eyes that bore coldly into Skuld, and Skuld thought it almost looked like Homura-san's mouth had disappeared altogether for the moment. Never a good sign, that. All the same, since Homura-san still wasn't talking after a few moments of that, Skuld felt like tempting fate and asking for some ice cream. If she was going to go, she might as well go on a full stomach.

"Um, Homura-chan," the pink haired woman said, preventing Skuld's incoming and potentially disastrous faux pas. "Do you want me to ask her myself, since you—"

"I'm just considering the best way to ask this, Madoka," Homura said quietly, with a softness that was a far cry from the tone she had used with Skuld only a few moments ago. It was not any more cheerful regardless.

Madoka nodded. "I see. That's a very commendable thing to do, especially when we are dealing with someone of Skuld-chan's stature, but remember, you had plenty of time to ponder that before she arrived. And I know you spent most of that time pacing around and sulking, but I was under the impression you had come to a conclusion on the matter by the time she came."

"If I have such a high stature, why do I get the '-chan' suffix?" Skuld wondered aloud.

The faintest shade of pink appeared on Homura's pale cheeks before the dark haired woman addressed Skuld again. "What are your intentions regarding Makie-chan's Pactio?"

Despite herself, Skuld blinked. She had been expecting for a 'What are your intentions regarding Makie-chan?', but hardly this. Briefly, she turned wary, suspicious eyes to Kaname-san, but she found nothing there but a bland, generic sweet smile of encouragement, and the Norn couldn't help but sigh in exasperation.

"I can't say I intend to ever turn it into a Permanent Alliance, if that's what you're asking," she said. "I'm sorry, but it's hardly advisable for gods and mortals to establish that kind of lifelong links. Since, well, you know, _our_ lives…" She extended her arms open as much as she could, then added, "… _your_ lives." Saying this, she folded her arms, then raised a hand, and showed a tiny gap between her thumb and the pointer finger.

Then Skuld patiently waited for the women's reaction. Surely they would take it well, since she had made sure of explaining it in terms that were as plain and unscientific as possible, even if explaining herself that way downright repulsed her.

Even so, to Skuld's puzzlement, Homura quietly but visibly bristled for a fleeting moment, before calming back down and abruptly asking, "Then why contract with her in the first place?"

"It wasn't my idea, I only had come for a Provisional Alliance with someone else," Skuld protested. "Makie, who was under pressure from unrelated factors and afraid for her life at the time, thought imitating what she had just seen transpiring between that person and me was the best course of action."

"So she kissed you, you didn't kiss her," Madoka piped in before Homura could speak.

Skuld groaned, annoyed. "Yeah, pretty much, you got it."

Madoka sighed in relief. "Good to see she didn't take after Homura-chan, then."

"Hey," Homura-san monotoned before talking to Skuld once more. "Why was she afraid for her life, then, and what were those 'unrelated factors' you talk about?"

"She and her classmates were under attack from a demon horde during their Kyoto field trip, of course," Skuld muttered. "What, didn't she tell you that much?"

"I knew they should've gone to Hawaii," Homura droned. "Didn't I tell you, Madoka?"

"Yes, you told me, Homura-chan," her wife saintly nodded. "Repeatedly, as a matter of fact."

"Exactly. And yet, despite your claim that was against your will, you haven't seen fit to cancel that Alliance between the two of you yet," Homura accused Skuld. "Even though you are two-timing on Makie-chan by also being partners with that other girl."

"A boy, actually," Skuld corrected.

"A boy," Homura agreed. "A boy!"

"Being bisexual is no sin either," Madoka pointed out.

"I'm not bisexual!" Skuld shrieked.

"Don't get me wrong, Skuld-san," Homura said, "All things considered, I feel better about your being partners with Makie-chan than I'd feel if Negi-sensei were her Magister Magi. And if you were to devote yourself exclusively to her, I would have no problems giving your relationship a test period. But, this… I don't think I can accept this."

"We aren't in a romance with each other," Skuld growled.

"So! You are toying with Makie-chan's feelings! And you admit it freely!" Homura said as a scary black aura began surrounding her, a haunting faint music flowing from behind.

"She's always been well aware of that!" Skuld kept on protesting.

"Then you're making her suffer even worse, by leading her off through the torture of an unrequited love!" Homura replied, strands of her hair beginning to stand up as if to become the extensions of a monstrous dark figure.

"Kaname-san!" Skuld moaned.

Madoka sighed, raised a hand, and firmly slapped the back of Homura's head, who quickly went back to what passed for normal in her, wincing. "Homura-chan! Enough of that already!"

"Thank you," Skuld nodded. "Now, regarding the nature of my relationship with Makie-san, you can rest assured it is merely, we could say, professional."

It was Madoka's turn to glare over the table, even if nowhere as coldly as Homura. "Now, now, Skuld-chan. I love Makie dearly, and I'll be the first one to say she's much smarter than she lets on, but if there's one word that doesn't define her, that's 'professional'."

"What if you're talking about gymnastics?" Homura questioned, still rubbing the back of her own head.

Madoka primly wagged a finger. "The most devoted of amateurs is still an amateur! I'll say otherwise when her hobby starts bringing in money!"

Skuld looked back and forth between them, frowning, before saying cautiously, "What I meant was, we've reached an agreement where our contract stands, because, besides the fact that it is extremely difficult to break a contract with Heaven to begin with, we have a common interest in a certain endeavor."

"What kind of endeavor?" Makie's mothers asked at the same time.

And Skuld sighed again. "Well, if you really need to know…"

* * *

Negi Springfield sat on a bench under a massive cherry tree, ignoring Itoshiki Nozomu's quiet presence literally hanging above him.

Inugami Kotaro, who sat by Negi's side thoughtfully munching on a handful of still steaming meat bun ('cause real men didn't wait for the cooldown, of course, that was for sissies and girls), kept on looking, back and forth, at the child teacher and then at the older, lanky teacher who had hung himself on the tree's upper branches. Finally, the wolf boy sighed and shook his head in disgust.

"I can't decide which one of you is the saddest. Wait, I think I can. Suicide can be honorable at least under some circumstances. Weeping over a full schedule never is," Kotaro observed.

"I'm, I'm not weeping!" Negi said, turning his haunted eyes to Kotaro as his hands still held the Mahorafest schedule notebook, open on a page that showed multiple annotations and tiny cute doodles of girls' heads drawn all over the three days of the event. "I'm just baffled as to how this could come to happen!"

"Well," Kotaro said, "it might have something to do with your refusal to say 'no' whenever a girl came to you asking for you to spend time with them."

"How could I?!" Negi protested. "They're my students! I can't possibly deny them any guidance! I could stunt, stall, or even delay their academic and emotional development! What kind of teacher would I be then?!"

"A normal one?" Kotaro questioned.

"That's not funny!" Negi replied. "God, I hope you never get to be a teacher!" he shook his head in absolute dismay. "You'd be terrible at it!"

Kotaro shrugged after swallowing another mouthful. "I don't think you have to worry about that. Anyway, as long as you don't try to squirm outta our fight, I don't care one way or another. Just commenting."

Negi glanced sideways at him. "What do you mean with 'our fight'? It's not like we're going to be the two only people in that tournament, what makes you so sure we'll be facing each other?"

Kotaro snorted at him. "What, are you telling me we ain't gonna be the two last men standing in the finals?"

"I highly doubt that, by the mere virtue of Saotome-san's father coming along," Itoshiki observed from above. "Not to mention Takamichi might-"

"Isn't your neck too tight for you to speak?!" Kotaro barked up at him.

"- and that's even without going on how Ku Fei-san mustn't have taught Negi-sensei all she knows yet, and Nagase-san surely-"

"I repeat, isn't your neck too tight for you to speak?!" Kotaro said, reaching up to grab one of Itoshiki's ankles and tugging down on his foot.

Negi frowned, then slapped Kotaro's hand off his colleague's foot. He shook his head disapprovingly at the other boy, who pouted petulantly at him.

"What, would you prefer duking it out right now?" Kotaro challenged. "All the better for me! I'm sure anyone else in that tournament could give me a better fight anyway!"

"By now you should know me well enough, Kotaro-kun," Negi coldly said, standing up and taking his jacket off. "If you think I'd ever fall for such shameless baiting, then you can't truly call yourself my rival, as is clearly your intent."

Kotaro sneered as he downed his last meat bun and stood up as well, rolling his sleeves up. "Don't get me wrong, I'm still young and believe in starting small. I'm just using you as a warmup rival while I move up the ladder."

"Don't fight, don't fight," Itoshiki weakly pleaded, but his words passed right over their heads in more than one sense. "Why don't you focus your great power on destroying me instead? It'd do a lot for your budding friendship, and, believe me, for me as well."

"Well, I suppose that, since you're a Mahora student as well now, it falls on any available teacher to discipline you as soon as you step over the proper lines, Kotaro-kun," Negi reasoned while assuming a fighting stance. "I'd fail in my job if I neglected that."

Kotaro chuckled, smashing his knuckles together. "Just don't expect me to moan 'Please teach me, Negi-sensei'! I'm not one those-"

Then a body was violently flung through the air directly onto his back, making him stumble ahead and land on the sidewalk facefirst, greatly startling Negi. "Chao-san!" the boy teacher gasped. "Are you, are you okay?!" he rushed to her side, helping the Chinese girl up even as she already chuckled apologetically, the hand that wasn't holding Negi's rubbing the back of her neck instead.

"- girls who keep getting in our way," Kotaro muttered darkly from the floor, while being completely ignored by Negi and Chao Lingshen, who now stood facing each other, the Welsh boy looking visibly troubled and confused. "I'm fine, by the way, thanks for asking."

"Ah, yes, I am, Negi-bouzou," the black haired girl said, nodding clumsily as smiling in pretty much the same way. "Sorry about that, and, oh, to you too, Inugami-kun, right? Ah, you're here as well, Zetsubou-sensei, how do you do? Looking fine today!"

"Thank you," the adult said without looking down. "Since you're here, Chao-san, could you tie something heavy to my feet? These unruly boys would prefer to fight each other instead."

"Oh, sorry, can't do!" Chao gasped, as if suddenly remembering something very important. She quickly grabbed Negi's hands very tightly, making him blush with cheek stickers identical to her own, while Kotaro stood back up, muttering to himself and eyeing her suspiciously. "You must help me, Negi-bouzou! I'm being pursued by some very strange and threatening people!"

* * *

"I don't agree with that!" Homura protested.

"And I can't say that's a surprise," Skuld said nonchalantly.

Homura stared at her, in that way of hers that was at once chillingly icy and heatedly dreadsome. "Look. I can't say I really care whether that friend, or ally, of yours, succeed at that insane plan or not. But I refuse to let you drag Makie into it. We both do! Don't we, Madoka?"

"Well..."

"Madoka!"

"Well," her pink haired spouse repeated, then continued, "I don't like it any better than you, but by now, maybe we should be letting her make her own world changing decisions? We did when we were her age."

Homura gave her an aghast look before shaking her head in shaken dismay. "I just can't believe this."

Madoka pouted. "Homura-chan! We never even thought of involving our parents! At least Makie-chan's been honest enough to pull us into her secrets! Don't you think that earns her a little credit?"

"Well, I hated my parents anyway," Homura mumbled to herself, looking rather childlike for a moment as she folded her arms and looked away.

"Just look at it this way," Skuld pointed out, "If every girl in the world knew the truth about magic, then they wouldn't be as likely to fall for Incubators, would they? Not when there are other, safer ways to learn how to perform magic. Maybe we even could make public service announcements concerning Incubators! Oh, a few will still be stupid enough as to fall for it, no offense intended, but you can't really do anything for _those_ kind of people, can you?"

Again, Homura glared at her. "Didn't _your_ people create the Incubators to begin with?"

"That's classified information," Skuld merely shrugged. "I'm only authorized to say, if we had done that, it would have happened long before I took office, and I wouldn't necessarily agree with the concept in the first place."

Then she pulled her laptop on the table, turned it around so its screen faced both women, and said with a wide smile, "I've developed a much better and more efficient long term project to deal with the Entropy matter anyway! Do you have a couple hours? I promise it's completely enthralling! And there'll be lots of highly engaging graphics and statistics!"

Homura calmly reached over, then pushed the laptop closed. "We aren't interested in hearing about anything but Makie."

Madoka nodded. "Fuck Entropy."

Skuld blinked. "Wow. The Precision F Strike. So you _are_ serious. Ahem. Well. Look, Makie already made her mind on the subject, don't you think you owe her some respect for her decisions, after keeping the secrets about her origin from her for so long? I mean, if you really wanted to keep her away from magic so much, you shouldn't have enrolled her in Mahora, and in class A of all places, in the first place, right?"

"Right, because nothing strange and horrible ever happens at CLAMP Gakuen, or Ohtori, or God in Heaven, Honnouji." Homura faintly shook her head.

Madoka, in contrast, nodded. "Better the devil you know than the one you don't. Speaking of which, Homura-chan, are you sure you should be invoking God's name? You are the Devil, after all."

"Retired Devil," Homura primly reminded, pointer finger raised. "The point is, one school has Shadow card games, the other has death matches with Social Darwinism and super powered uniforms, and the third one has Ohtori Akio. And all other schools in this area aren't worth their salt. Where else could we place Makie?"

Skuld nodded slowly. "When you put it that way -" Then her cellphone rang to the tune of some Inoue Kikuko song. "Just a sec, please. Yes? Oh, it's you, Yuuna. No, I'm here with Makie's mothers, not- What? Whaddya mean what am I doing here, why, I am- What's that sound back there? Are you being- What?!" she suddenly screamed, eyes bugging out.

Homura and Madoka tensed immediately.

Skuld clenched a very forced grin, began sweating visibly almost in the spot, and told them, while pushing the cellphone down. "W-Well, heh heh, we might have to cut this delightful conversation short for now. You'll see, it just happens-"

 _ **"Where's Makie and what's happening to her?!"**_ Madoka and Homura loomed over her and the table at once.

Skuld cringed and, despite herself, shrunk under their combined shadow.

* * *

"So, what did she say?" Izumi Ako asked as Akashi Yuuna cut the call short, then pocketed the cellphone back into her tight shorts.

Yuuna shrugged as she ran, along Makie and Akira, the latter of whom was in full Sailor Mercury regalia, sporting a perfectly blank expression, and carrying Ako on her back, with the pale nurse holding tightly for dear life. "She said she'd be on her way. Looks like she's with your mothers, by the way, Makie-chan."

Makie gulped. "Oh, geez! Now that... that's scary!"

The five strange figures chasing them along the street might have taken offense to that overheard comment, since they obviously were trying their best to look imposing and threatening, in their long, all concealing white and golden robes with huge wings on their backs, but since their faces were also completely covered by sharp white masks, there was no way to say for sure for any of the curious bystanders taking pictures and gawking in awe as they got out of the pursuit's way, all the while commenting on the street shows outdoing themselves every year.

"Didn't she tell you what are these things?" Ako asked again, her voice a high pitched whine over the mutters and cheers of the crowd.

"No, she didn't! You know how she is!" Yuuna grumbled. "Aki- I mean, Mercury-san, are you sure they aren't-"

"I told you, no, they just don't look evil enough," Akira stoically said, actually trying her best not to leave her other two friends behind in the dust. That was one of the two good things about this whole situation, knowing she could escape as soon as she figured out a way to get the other three girls out of harm's way, hopefully leading the strangers away from them until Minako and Shiho arrived. The other good thing was, at least no one could connect Ookuchi Akira directly with this. That was worth something, right? At least she wouldn't make Mom and Dad concerned, unless the creatures happened to kill her, of course.

"They don't look evil enough?!" Yuuna incredulously echoed.

Akira just nodded. "Once they drop their human disguises, youma look invariably evil and twisted. And while these fellows are certainly stern and dangerous looking, I don't know ... they don't look evil to me. Much like that fire girl I fought at Kyoto... I wonder what's become of her since?"

Yuuna resisted the urge to facepalm while she ran since that never was a good idea.

"Okay, whatever, now call on Negi-kun!" Makie urged. "You're the only one who can, since only you are his Ministra, and he-"

"THAT'S PART OF THE PLAY TOO, PEOPLE!" Yuuna screamed over what Makie said next, then shot the smaller girl a truly fierce stare. Makie only bit her tongue and shrank down apologetically.

And then...

"VENUS LOVE-ME CHAIN!" someone shouted from above, as a chain made of glowing energy hearts descended from a rooftop, slashing across the street right before the silent pursuers, forcing them to stop and look up.

Yuuna and her three friends also came to a halt and looked in that direction. "Venus, Mars!" Akira sighed in relief.

Sailor Venus struck a heroic pose as she stood on the rooftop's edge, cutting an impressive figure under the afternoon's sun, orange miniskirt flapping in the breeze while the crowd below squee'd and began taking pictures of the white leotard that could be clearly seen under said skirt. Next to her, the red-haired Sailor Mars frowned, holding her own skirt down with the hand that was not holding two high heeled red shoes, her feet bare.

"Chasing pretty girls who aren't interested in you is an unforgivable crime of harassment!" Sailor Venus cried out, gesturing grandly. "School festivals shouldn't be about chasing innocents around! That's a perversion of the spirit of Mahora and all it stands for! So Sailor Venus-"

Pause.

Then Minako discreetly elbowed Shiho's chest a few times.

Shiho sighed very deeply. "- and Sailor Mars-" she droned.

"- will punish you in the name of Venus!"

Another pause.

"You're supposed to add 'and in the name of Mars'," Venus mumbled to Mars from a corner of her mouth.

"Like fuck I am!" Shiho protested, then threw one of her shoes down. "Let's just finish this whole mess already!"

The shoe flew down, then imbedded itself, sharp heel first, in the mask of one of the strange pursuers, throwing it back and dropping it on the pavement, lifting dust in all directions.

"... she still hasn't learned how to walk in high heels?" Ako asked Akira.

Akira only shook her head.

"Shut up, you try and to walk in those things, you stupid girl, you!" Shiho madly prattled from above while the downed being stood back up, took hold of the shoe, dislodged it, touched the cracks on its mask, and silently sulked under the seemingly strict gaze of its companions.

Then, as one, they charged again, while Yuuna spun around pulling her guns out, and Sailors Venus and Mars leapt down to join the starting fray.

 _Oboy_ , thought Makie. Mom and Mom would be really upset now.

* * *

"Far from me," Kotaro said while leaping from tree to tree, him, Negi and Chao having chosen to take their own chase into the woods to lead their pursuers away from Mahora campus proper, "to butt in on a lady's business, but why the hell are these guys chasing you anyway?"

"I have no idea," Chao candidly confessed. "I have never seen them before!"

And, believe it or not, that was not a lie, since she was usually chased by the forces of the Mahora staff instead. Well, the first few times at least. After a while, she had wised up and learned to hide her hand from the teachers until the Festival proper started, which annoyingly hadn't helped her in the long run yet, but at least took a few concerns off her mind in the meanwhile. She hadn't been chased before the Festival for a good while, actually. "Although... I might have a few theories, but it'd do no good sharing them now, ne?"

Kotaro gave her an annoyed side glance while the girl smirked sheepishly, a finger on her chin. "Well, can you at least tell us how strong they are? I think we're far enough by now to start kicking the crap outta them."

"They're strong enough to put me on the run," Chao warned.

"That's good enough for me, then," Kotaro announced, dropping off the latest tree and onto the middle of the forest, gesturing for the five masked, robed humanoids with wings coming after them. "Alright, guys, I know you've been waiting for this, and so was I! If you aren't the talking type, fine with me, let's talk through our fists instead!"

Negi came to a halt in the midle of his own sprint to turn back towards the other boy. "Kotaro, no! We don't have an idea yet how powerful they might be!"

"Only one way to find out!" Kotaro howled, claws coming out as he jumped straight into the lead attacker, managing to give it a large slash across the chest. The heavy cloth protecting its body was not even ripped, however, and the creature merely slapped Kotaro away against a tree, making him growl in pain. "Okay, first contact says 'a lot'!" he admitted while landing back on his feet.

Negi took a deep breath while Chao placed herself behind him, striking a kenpo ready pose. The boy mage, on the other hand, lifted his father's fabled staff and chanted, _"Septendecim spiritus aeriales, coeuntes! Sagitta Magica, Series Fulguralis!"_

The seventeen projectiles of light flew from Negi, splitting themselves in mid air as to engage different adversaries at once, but they all were deflected in all directions instantly when strange, pentagonal shields of translucent energy appeared before each pursuer, easily blocking every arrow. Negi cringed while grabbing Chao and jumping back to her, barely dodging the barrage of impacts sent back against them in time. "Gosh! Those sure are good barriers!"

"AT Field?" Chao murmured to herself. "Then, these-"

Negi chanced a very brief glance back at her. "Huh?"

"Nothing!" Chao rushed to reply. "Just be careful, Negi-bouzou! These beings are unlike anything you've ever faced!"

"Well, I wouldn't say that much, Chao Lingshen," a slow, heavy, yet naturally sensual and rich female voice said as the five pursuers took pause, just long enough as to step aside and let a newcomer walk into sight from behind them, fixing fascinating, bright green eyes on the youngsters. "Why, when you get down to it, I'm just like my little sister. Although far more beautiful and powerful, of course," the voluptuous, dark skinned woman who had just arrived added, tossing her short platinum white hair back, forcing a smile that tightly tugged at the corners of her lips. "Surely she's told you kids of me? My name's Urd. Pleased to meet, well, two of you at least."

"A woman. Figured it had to be a dame," Kotaro grunted, slowly walking aside to stand by the frowning, wary Negi, who still wasn't lowering his staff and glared intensely at the stranger.

"Skuld-san only ever mentioned one sister, ma'am," Negi polite but coldly said, "and her name was Belldand- Oh," he quietly said, then slapping himself on the forehead. "But of course! How could I ever be so stupid?!"

"Eh?" Kotaro snorted.

"Urd, Verdandi, Skuld, naturally!" Negi shook his head to himself, blushing brightly. "Where's my mind been lately? Anya would surely laugh at me now!"

"Well, you have been under a lot of stress of late," Chao said.

"I'm afraid you don't even know the half of it, Chao-san," her teacher said, "but even so, that's no excuse for a mental slip of that degree."

"No, seriously, what in the world are you talking about?" Kotaro asked.

"Ahem," Urd rasped into a fist.

The three children looked at her again.

Negi bowed. "I apologize over my oversight, it won't happen again, I don't know Skuld-san's reasons for never mentioning you, but-"

"Ohh, that doesn't matter!" the tall woman in the tight, revealing blouse and hip hugging pants waved a hand in fast acted annoyance, "That's just like her anyway! I just want you boys to step aside and let me take this ... this girl under custody! Okay?"

Chao blinked, made her best wide eyed innocent face, and sheepishly pointed at her own chest. "... _Moi?_ "

* * *

Normally, the customers and staff of the Radish Cafe that happened to be conveniently close to the site of the latest Mahora street brawl never paid very much attention to said street brawl. They had been a long standing tradition of the area, and nowadays they usually all were about either Ku Fei schooling a few challengers, Death Glasses Takahata disciplining a few unlucky hooligans, or that weird, goofy vagrant in the pink karate gi challenging someone and having the crap kicked out of him.

Today, however, the situation was different. Students and staff from the other three major schools in the district were there for the Mahorafest, and while those from Honnouji were even more indifferent to random street violence than Mahora denizens, those from CLAMP Gakuen and Ohtori were unused to the sight of battles that didn't involve fencing duels, tankery games, Gundam models, collectible card games, roses, or Brave Duel simulations. Not to mention the visiting parents and other relatives of the Mahora contingent were in the season of watching in horror and gasp at the environment their salaries were buying for their children. A few of them would even consider retiring their children from Mahora afterwards, until they realized their options were, well, CLAMP Gakuen, Ohtori or Honnouji. Then, generally, they would stick with the lesser evil.

The main reason everyone was looking and taking pictures today, however, was the rare presence of Mahou Shoujo in a fight during daytime, in the open. At this rate they would soon have Superman and General Zod fighting at the middle of Mahora.

"So that's Sailor V, huh," Tokiha Mai, who was still fairly new at Mahora herself, blinked as she stood by the window, behind several awestruck customers, in her Radish waitress uniform and holding a large empty tray close to her even larger bustline. "It must be cool having this sort of mutant powers, but... shouldn't we, maybe, evacuate the site LIKE RIGHT NOW?!"

"Eh, you only live once, Mai-san," shrugged the shorter and less busty daughter of the cafe's manager, also Mai's co-worker, leaning closer to the window over a few of her customers, who were being slow but steadily pushed aside by her as she moved. "Be quiet and let us enjoy the show, okay? Besides, it's even more dangerous to go out while this is going on, don't you think?"

Still sitting at her table several meters away, Kuchiki Rukia kept on giving the girl who had just spoken an ongoing series of puzzled, troubled looks, before leaning closer to the apathetic boy sitting across her while stuffing his mouth, and asking him in a low voice, "Hey, Ichigo. Isn't that girl... well, wasn't she supposed to be dead? I could swear we saw her once, hell, we reaped her, for Kami's sake."

Kurosaki Ichigo shrugged and mumbled, "We only handle the reaping. If afterwards they are brought back by a wish on a cursed artifact, Puella Magi contract, or a superhuman punching reality, that's their own problem, not ours. Don't overthink these things, Rukia."

"A superhuman punching reality?" Rukia asked. "What kind of stupid- Wait, no, better yet, what is a Puella Magi supposed to be?"

Two tables away, a little girl around thirteen with dark hair who was sitting with her quiet, busty older sister shuddered briefly.

"VENUS LOVE AND BEAUTY SHOCK!" a voice was shouting outside, and then the whole street seemed to quake.

"Whoa!" said a girl with reddish hair made in two side tails, mouth very open while her black haired mother, bespectacled eagerly tried to take pictures and annotations at once, and her little brother kept on pushing the head of a frog trying to peek out right back into the handbag he was holding. "Now that's power! Did you see that?! She blew that guy right into that lamppost! Awesome!"

"Hey, Nee-san, do you think more Mahou Shoujo could show up before the authorities do?" a busty, bright eyed girl with long light brown hair wearing a CLAMP uniform anxiously asked Mai, while her dark haired, pale and proper looking friend took a delicate hand to her mouth and gasped quietly at the violence unfolding outside.

"How, how could I know?" Mai stammered, eyebrow twitching lightly. "I'm not even sure what other Mahou Shoujo are there around here..."

"Oh!" the other girl smirked, pulling a small booklet out and flipping through it. "The fanzines have all the info you need, then! They gather info about every Mahou Shoujo in the Four Schools Area and have it printed for our convenience as soon as it's hit the Internet! I never leave without one, as you never know when you'll have an encounter with the world of-"

"Mutants! They're mutants, everyone knows that!" someone shouted from the tightly gathered crowd. "Stupid outsiders, just let us watch the fight in peace!"

The girl with the fanzine stuck her tongue out. "Nyah! Good day to you too, mister!"

"Saori-chan, please," her friend sighed, "This isn't the time for scenes... And why not to just carry a laptop around, instead of a fanzine? Isn't that too... well, 20th century?"

Takebe Saori wagged a finger. "Everyone knows the active presence of Mahou Shoujo in a scene often brings massive energy pulses that interfere with Internet transmissions, Hana-chan! Ah! I wish we could also see that mysterious cute blond reaper in black! Or the newest one, Magical Heart!"

"... who?" Mai asked.

The girl who had shuddered moments ago shuddered again.

Her sister raised an eyebrow. "Kokoro-chan? Something wrong?"

The Imouto shook her head nervously. "No, no, it's nothing, Kotonoha-nee-chan, really... Just a passing feeling, that's all..."

Saori gasped and pointed out, even more excitedly. "Oh, look at that! There are more, new ones joining the fight now!" She began to quickly flip through her booklet. "I don't recognize these ones! Oh gosh oh gosh, we might be looking at the actual debut of new Mahou Shoujo, this is so thrilling!"

"I, I heard Magical Patissier is... sort of cool, too?" a tiny, mousey voice said from the back of the group.

Heads were briefly turned to look at the average looking girl with dark brown hair who had just spoken, and who now looked like she wished for the ground to swallow her.

"... who?" Mai repeated herself.

"Ah, no, nothing, forget it, just... there've been some sightings at Honnouji, of someone calling herself that..."

Onodera Haru groaned softly and tugged at the sleeve of her big sister. "Oneechan. On second thought, please let's just go back to our table."

* * *

"I'm sorry, Ma'am," Negi said, valiantly standing his ground, "but even if you are the sister to one of my students, I just can't grant you custody of one of my students without a proper, signed and sealed authorization from the Headmaster himself."

Urd blinked.

So did Kotaro, for that matter. "Um, Glasses," he told Negi, "not that I don't respect your guts just this once, but from what I know about that Skuld girl, you realize you're talking to a goddess, aren't you?"

Negi nodded steadily, his eyes still fixed on the perplexed Urd. "Naturally. Still, the rules I've sworn to uphold apply to everyone. There is no clause saying gods are exempt."

Urd paused as her Angel units looked at each other and her waiting for a confirmation on what to do next. Then she sighed and said, "I have a signed and sealed authorization from our Father Himself, is that good enough for you, squirt?"

"It would be if it came from Chao-san's father, but as it stands, it'd only authorize you to remove Skuld-san from campus grounds, sorry," Negi apologized.

"Oh, in the name of all that's holy!" Urd groaned, reaching into her Victoria's secret compartment and feeling inside, which made Kotaro take a hand to his nose and Negi just keep standing apparently unaffected. "You can't tell me you are going to resist an executive order from Yggdrasil itself! What are you, a demon? An atheist? Just look, I'm sure I have it right here, hmmm." She stopped, and looked at one of her Angels. "Hey, you, do you have it instead?"

The Angel said something that came out highly muffled through the mask.

"Take that darn thing off before answering, you know I can't understand a damn thing when you have it on!" Urd protested. "Geez, it's not like you have secret identities to protect in this world!"

The Angel nodded, then took the mask off and pulled the also white hood over it back, revealing the pale, gorgeous face of a young woman with short blue hair and quiet, passive red eyes. "I apologize. We have no such written authorization in our power, Lady Urd. Only divine entities are allowed to carry them on their person. Perhaps you left it in your nightstand. Again."

"Dammit!" Urd muttered, quickly pulling a cellphone out and hitting the speed dial. "Satoru? It's me. Look, I think I left a golden envelope in my nightstand drawer, would you be a dear and bring it here? Yeah, I'm at the school. Just use the GPS I gave you, why do I need to give you an exact address? It's there, right? No, moron, don't touch it, you know well Heaven's own touch burns! Damn, I warned you, Satoru! Oh, don't be a baby, just put some lotion on it and grab it with some gloves! Yeah, you can use mine! Just get me that thing on the double, I'm in the middle of important business here!" She cut the call and irritably shook her head. "You can't even get decent fucktoys these days, I tell you!"

"What's a fu-" Negi began before shaking his head himself. "No, forget that, regardless, I'm sorry, but even if they bring you that document, I'm afraid it'll still do you no good unless it comes from the Principal's office. Would you like to call him? That, I can arrange."

"I think I'd prefer it if you didn't, Negi-bouzou," Chao piped in.

"Oh, of course you wouldn't, would you," Urd sneered at her. "You should be grateful, pipsqueak. It's just because of your friendship to Skuld I asked to be sent here instead of Rind. And believe me, then you'd be really sorry! Oh, if you had any idea how many favors I had to pull off for this..."

Kotaro kept on blinking. "Okay, then. Well, if there's going to be no fight, I guess I'll be on my way then."

"Yes, you do that, please," Urd nodded.

"While I'd certainly like it better that way, no one's said for sure there won't be conflict yet," Negi insisted. "Because no matter what, no one will outright kidnap one of my students while I can help it."

Kotaro stared at him, then slapped his own forehead. "When did we go and change places, for Pete's sake?! Look, I'm always up for a good brawl, but I'm also a well raised Shinto, and they teach us to respect divinity, dammit!"

"She's a Norse goddess," Negi pointed out.

"Same difference, we Shinto are very accepting of others' beliefs! That's why we and Buddhists didn't kill each other over control of Japan in the first place!"

"You kids sure are amusing," Urd allowed herself a jaded smirk before being tapped by the unmasked Angel on a shoulder. "Now what, Rei?"

"Mistress," the Angel handed her her own cellphone, "we just got news from the Beta Squad. They have just been engaged by The Pink One and The Black One."

Urd immediately, violently, choked in her saliva.

* * *

It wasn't that Akashi Yuuna was unhappy to see even more people coming from above to join the melee. Even if they were ultimately hostile to them as well, at least it looked like their main target were the strangers who had been chasing her and her friends around, so she figured they could escape in the confusion even in the worst case scenario.

And it was a relief, too; her handguns had proved to be useless on these... fellows, as her father would say, since they just kept on deploying those weirdass fields that gave Yuuna a headache just by looking at them, and her anti-magic bullets would simply bounce off them. She had to wonder if Asuna's harisen would have been effective at all against it, but the last thing she wanted to do right now was pull even more of her friends into this mess.

"Ako," she said, grabbing the sweaty, pale and small hand of the assistant nurse, whom Akira had left behind a well polished mailbox (a relic of the old times left for decoration purposes only for over a decade now). "Let's split now! while they're distracted!"

"Ah? Buh, but Yuuna-chan! Akira -!"

"She'll be okay!" Yuuna insisted, pulling her up to her feet. At least she hoped so. Unlike her own attacks, those of the Senshi had more of an actual effect on those guys, even if they kept on coming back from everything the Mahou Shoujo threw at them. Still, those attacks could at least pierce through their defenses after enough pressure, especially the fire based projectiles of the crazy octopus-haired Senshi.

"FIRE SOUL! FIRE SOUL! FIRE SOUL!" Sailor Mars kept on chanting, again and again bringing her hands together to spam huge figures of flames shaped like demonic crows, repeatedly pushing the Angel unit facing her back and back, visibly draining her more and more by the moment. It was clear she would collapse before long, but Yuuna hoped they could hold their own long enough until the magical teachers arrived to put the kibosh on the whole thing. That was more than could be said about the likes of Ako, which was why Yuuna was so intent on taking her away quickly.

Well, that, and because she wanted to leave before the teachers arrived. Dad might be one of the chosen to sweep the scene up, after all.

It probably would be a moot point anyway moments after, when the two new girls arrived instead. And now they stood there, so small and delicate looking and yet also giving such a strange impression of being larger than life. Especially, ironically enough, the shortest one, the one in pale pink, even down to her hair, smiling faintly while holding a longbow loaded with several sharp arrows at once. The one with long and smooth black hair standing shortly behind managed to draw less attention to herself, somehow, which probably was a good thing seeing how she seeming so uncomfortable with the gazes she was getting.

"Hey! You!" the pink haired newcomer suddenly said, looking towards Makie, who had paused in the middle of aiming her Ball Artifact at one of the Angel units. So far, her attacks hadn't been any more successful than Yuuna's, but unlike Yuuna, she hadn't yet gotten the idea maybe that meant she should stop attempting them already. "Are you okay, Ma- um, Miss?"

"Ah?" Makie blinked a few times, then pointed at herself. "Do you mean me?"

Nod, nod! went the other pink haired girl.

"I'm fine, thank you!" Makie smiled before squinting and glaring really hard at this strange girl. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

"Um-" the girl with the arrows began to say.

"Absolutely not! We are new in this city, and as a matter of fact we're only passing by! We're going to leave real soon!" her partner rushed to answer for her, still intently avoiding looking in Makie's direction. As a matter of fact, she was casually holding a sleeve to her face, as if to shield herself from the sun, the gun in that hand being held up in a way that made people peeking through several windows in neighboring upper stories duck warily.

"Oh," Makie slowly said. Now she looked at Sailor Venus. "Do _**you**_ know them from somewhere, then?"

"If they were with us, you'd better believe they'd be wearing the proper attire!" Venus protested, tugging down on the edge of her skirt once.

In the meanwhile, the Angel units had huddled together at the other end of the street, coming closer to each other and seeming to conference between themselves, although no sound could be heard coming from them. Perhaps they simply were speaking too softly for human ears at that distance. Whatever the case was, their current attitude was far different from the confident, nonstop attack they had been pressing on the girls until moments ago, and now, despite their featureless masks, they definitely gave the impression that they would never take their sights off the newly arrived duo.

Then they all tensed for a moment, as if sensing a call from somewhere, and instantly vanished in thin air.

"Well," Shiho said. " _That_ was anticlimactic."

* * *

"Report," Urd, with a fist cocked on a hip, coldly told one of the new Angel units who had just arrived out of nowhere, simply blinking into existence at the spot in the woods where Negi and the others were. The boys still held the careful, tense battle ready stances they had struck just as soon as the new units appeared, while Chao simply stood behind them, kicking peebles as she crossed her arms behind her neck.

The Angel unit Urd had addressed began speaking in a tone that was completely unintelligible through the mask.

"Not you too!" Urd shouted. "The mask, you moron, take the mask off!"

The unit nodded, then obeyed, revealing a pale face identical to that of the first unmasked Angel, who by now simply stood aside, extending a hand up and letting a tiny bluebird stand on her fingers while chirping. "I apologize. As informed, the two singularities appeared to further interfere in our apprehension of Chao Lingshen's accomplices. Thus we contacted you immediately, My Lady. Should we return and engage them?"

"Singularities?" Kotaro wondered aloud.

"Accomplices?" Negi said.

"That's such an ugly word to use in this context!" Chao sighed whimsically.

"Further?" Urd inquired.

The unit she had asked this to nodded. "In the middle of our pursuit, we were attacked by two of the current Solar System princesses, those of Mars and Venus. Should we return and engage them as well?"

"Are you nuts?" Urd groaned, beginning to rub her own temples. "That was supposed to be a simple apprehension and extraction job, how could you botch it that much? Honestly, this is why I just don't trust clones."

"Our apologies, but they simply began running away as soon as we commanded them to-"

"You shouldn't have commanded anything in the first place, you should have just dropped on them and taken them down just as soon as you arrived!" Urd reprimanded her. "What are they teaching you at Basic Training?!"

"Actually, Lady Rind says the correct procedure starts with a Cease and Desist order -"

Urd began rubbing her temples in circles again. "And this is why I never applied for the Warfare Department. They have to make such a big fuss of something as simple as wrecking stuff up! Argh! Now look at what you did, of course you'd alert the singularities if you started chasing their daughter, you, you clone!"

"Is everyone okay?" Negi asked.

Urd and the Rei she was talking with looked back at him. Then the Angel nodded. "Affirmative. The battle was short enough no one was seriously injured, although massive public property damage was still a factor."

Negi sighed in relief. "Oh, that doesn't matter as long as everyone's okay! So, um, who are those accomplices you were-"

"Again, I wouldn't call them accomplices!" Chao interrupted with a cute angry pout. "I can't believe you're using such an ugly and dismissive term as well, Negi-bouzou! On your own students, too!"

Negi gave her a bewildered glare. "Chao-san! You're pulling your classmates into delinquent activities?!"

Chao's pout only intensified. "If anything, we're the complete opposites of delinquents! We are angels of selfless mercy!"

"Cough cough," went the Reis.

"You're nurses?" Kotaro asked slyly.

"Well, one of us is, ne."

"You've dragged Ako-san into this?!" Negi gasped aloud.

Urd threw her hands up. "You know what, let's call it a day for now. We weren't supposed to deal with the Pink and the Black, so we'll have to pull back until we're told what our next move supposed to be after this. But remember this, Chao Lingshen! Don't even start thinking you're off the hook yet!"

Chao shrugged. "I never think that, yo."

"Who are the Pink and the Black?" Negi said. "Honestly, people are never that secretive with me unless they're talking about sex!"

Silence fell all over the clearing.

Negi stomped his foot down. "Well, I don't understand the specifics, but I know they're talking about sex! I think."

Urd began gesturing with a hand in growing frustration before simply shaking her head and exhaling, lowering the hand. "I'll let you settle this amongst yourselves for the time being. Skuld likes playing to be the Woman with the Answers, so why don't you start asking her? You're more likely to get answers from her than from this troublemaker here."

Chao kept on pouting. "I fix problems, I never start them! Negi-bouzou, are you going to believe a suspicious woman with a god complex dressed that way on high school grounds while commanding a squad of clones trying to kidnap your students and fighting Magical Girls, or me?"

"..." Negi said. "Well, when you put it that way..."

"Hey!" Urd groaned. "Okay, I might be a little bit naughty and proud of it, but I'm still a perfectly okay person, I mean Goddess, of a high moral caliber!"

"Boss," said a young man who had just arrived in a bike, softly stopping by her side and tapping her on a shoulder with a golden envelope. "Boss, I'm here as you asked!"

"Not now, Satoru!" she fiercely growled at him while snatching the envelope away. "I can't believe you've got the gall to show up now, after everything's done! Now what use do I have for this anyway?!"

"Boss, I had to drive through the whole city, and then these woods," the young biker who remarkably looked a lot like Keiichi-san in Negi's perplexed opinion moaned, with the voice of a highly downtrodden man (even in that, so much like Keiichi-san!) "And I even had to work my way around a blockade, because there was some big fight involving Magical Girls in the middle of-"

She began walloping him over the head with the envelope. "Shut up, shut up, if I wanted to hear excuses I'd have asked for them instead of for this!"

"Who are you," Kotaro asked him, "and why are you wearing women's dominatrix gloves?"

"What's a dominatrix?" Negi asked. "And, I feel like I should add, how do you know what is that to begin with?"

"You don't know a lot about the type of places bad guys with bounties on their heads like to hide, do you?"

* * *

Elsewhere, the dark haired girl in the short skirt and the very tall black stockings sighed for the shortest moment, almost breaking the cool, unflappable image she had been giving until now, and which was making a lot of the people watching and taking pictures in the crowd to swoon, much to the disturbance of others.

"Be thankful it was anticlimactic," she told Sailor Mars. "Climaxes in this business are dangerous, deadly things. Most often involving heart-wrenching, painful sacrifices for the good of mankind."

"That sometimes are rendered pointless by the well-intentioned interference of adorably misguided people," her partner in light pink dutifully added.

The first mysterious Magical Girl gave her a look. "It worked out in the end, didn't it?"

Shiho grimaced, then looked at Minako. "I want out."

"For the last time, that's not an option anymore!" Venus told her, then took two fingers to her own forehead and sighed. "Never mind, let's just go home already. I'm not even in the mood to question you guys anymore. Shoo, shoo, just enigmatically vanish away leaving behind a cryptic message and hinting we'll meet again. That's the proper protocol for these things, after all!"

The very short girl with pink hair gasped at that. "What? No! What kind of twisted, unreliable Mahou Shoujo racket are you running in this world?!"

"Eh?" Minako snorted.

"Are you sure we haven't met before?" Makie hummed, squinting again to take a very close look at the other pink haired girl's face, before being grabbed from behind and grabbed back by a mortified Yuuna.

"Maki-chan," Akashi-sensei's daughter said, "Enough already, okay? Any moment now, the you-know-whos will arrive to interrupt this, ahem, amateur film we've ran into, and then we might get into a mess because we aren't official part of any movie club, and Dad-"

"Yuuna?" a dismayed voice said from the other end of the street.

Akashi Yuuna's skin crawled.

Because she had recognized the voice instantly, and even though she already was pulling the long overcoat tightly around her scantily clad body, trying to pull its neck up to hide as much of her face as she could, she knew, even from behind, that person had recognized her as well.

Standing on the sidewalk, with an awkward looking Takane D. Goodman and Sakura Mei right behind him, Akashi Wataru, just arrived to the scene and ready to clean any mess and wipe any memory he had in the line of duty, couldn't have been ready for that. To find his own daughter at the middle of a public incident involving magical vigilantes, and worst of it all, wearing that kind of tight shorts, and really, that top!

And with a gun in a hand!

"Oh, hey," Makie was waving at him, in a pink leotard that wasn't much more modest than Yuuna's attire. "Good afternoon, Sensei! We're filming a student movie!"

A moment later an angry Yuuna was punting her ass, hard.

"DID I ERR?!" Makie whined, unknowingly showing her generic heritage from long ago, from a time where her ancestors roamed the world braving danger and looking for cheese dip, always with a wide confident smile and not a whole lot of common sense...

[[Mako Voice]].

But that is another story. And that story, and the one of how Makie would become a Princess by her own hand, shall also be told.

[[/Mako Voice]].

* * *

 **To be Continued**.

 **In Further Side Conquests of an Accidental Stud Monkey, Chapter One**.


	2. Chapter 2

"It is a nice house, for a bachelor's house," Sailor Mars felt like observing, since nobody else was talking yet and the whole situation was getting unbearably tense. "Um, I mean, a widower's house, right? Um, sorry about that. Um, maybe I should be shutting up," she added, with far more insight than usual in her. Maybe her new responsibilities were helping her in at least one sense.

Sailor Mercury sat at her right and Sailor Venus, scowling, sat at her left, with Artemis sitting on Venus' lap. At Mercury's other side sat that plain and pale friend of hers Shiho didn't like one bit, and then her other two friends, the annoying twit with pink hair and the loudmouth who dressed like a skank and liked to shoot around like a damn Yankee. Not at all like Mana-Oneesama's calculated and precise shooting, where no aim was ever wasted.

Shiho still thought Mana-Oneesama was kind of a bitch herself, but she couldn't deny her efficiency.

At the other side of the table sat the owner of the house, who just accepted Mars' praise with a stoic nod while mercifully ignoring the rest of her remarks. At his left sat that bitchy Sempai who always ended up stripped when she nosed into Mana-Oneesama's jobs, which actually was always hilarious for Shiho to watch, and her obviously lesbian apprentice, who was around Shiho's age and actually studied in the classroom next door to hers. They both sat in an uncomfortable and wary silence, which was par for the course for the latter but not at all for the normally mouthy and arrogant former. At his left sat the annoyingly mysterious Magical Girls who had helped out against the even more annoyingly mysterious attackers who had ambushed Mercury and her stupid friends. For some reason, the one with black hair kept on staring firmly at a creeped out Artemis.

Shiho sighed to herself as she realized that, sadly, she didn't know a lot of people she actually liked. Probably could count them with the fingers of a hand and there would still be a few to spare.

How heartbreaking, in a way.

"We were filming a movie, really," Sasaki Makie insisted. She just didn't get it. After everyone in Ala Alba, Yuuna-chan included, had insisted so much on her saying that whenever their magic was found out, why was Yuuna-chan now upset at her when she did just that?

"When," Akashi-sensei asked his daughter, "did this start?"

"Um, well," Makie intervened. "You see, it was something we decided just last week, while trading ideas on what to do for the festival, and Madoka-chan was nearby, and commenting on how Sarumiya-sempai was thinking of making a student movie, so we thought-"

"It began during the trip to Kyoto," Yuuna sourly, grimly replied, not meeting her father's gaze. "It's a very long story, but the basic gist is, Konoka was kidnapped and a few of us set out to save her. It was then where I learned Negi's secrets and I had to make a Provisional Alliance with him."

"Yuuna-chan!" Makie gasped. "How can you say those kind of bold faced lies to your own dad!"

"Maki-chan, please," Ako groaned weakly. "Just stop it already, I beg you."

"I see," Professor Akashi said, just as grim and sourly.

Now Yuuna lifted her face just enough as to look at his face. "What are you expecting? An apology? I did what I had to do. Much like yourself, I guess, right?"

"I can't say I'm pleased, do you think you really can blame me?" her father exhaled deeply. "Yuuna, what do you think will happen to you and Negi when the Headmaster inevitably hears about this? Do you think that doesn't worry me more than anything else, included what will happen to myself?"

"Um, he already knows, if that's what worries you," Yuuna said.

Wataru paused. "Excuse me?"

Yuuna nodded. "He already knew everything by the time we made it back. Was very thankful, too. Even gave us some money."

"WHAT?!" Makie screamed. "He never gave ME any money, that cheeky old cagey grandpa!"

Yuuna shrugged. "Maybe he only repaid those who were partners with Negi-kun?"

"That's unfair!" Makie whined. "Is it because I kissed a girl instead? He of all people can't complain about girls who kiss other girls!"

"Has Konoka-san kissed Setsuna-san yet?" Ako asked, her curiosity piqued while Akira facepalmed.

"If she hasn't yet, I figure it's only a matter of time!" Makie shrugged.

Akashi-sensei was staring into the distance, or rather the wall, blankly now. "He knew... And he never told me... What, this, why this... betrayal..."

Slowly, eerily, his eyes shifted aside towards the suddenly cringing Takane and Mei, despite the fact the rest of his being remained motionless.

"Forgive us, please, Sensei!" Takane begged, closing her eyes and slamming her hands together before her face. "We only followed the proper procedure of never mentioning such matters to anyone unless absolutely necessary!"

"We never were even sure you hadn't been told, seriously, how would we know one way or another?!" Mei sobbed, clumsily copying her Sempai's gestures.

Akashi's eyes moved back towards the wall, as he slumped down flaccidly in place. "So, wherever I look, it's all the same, everyone keeping secrets about my flesh and blood from me."

"Well, that might be simple karma at work," Yuuna mumbled under her breath.

Akira discreetly pinched her arm. "Yuuna-chan. That was mean and uncalled for."

Yuuna just took it like a woman while wrinkling her nose.

"Please understand her, Akira-chan," Makie told Ako. "Any girl would be upset at learning her parents would be keeping secrets from them! Like, let's say, her parents being Magical Girls themselves, or having dropped a twin sister of their daughter in another dimension."

"Eeeeehhhhh?" Shiho said, her pigtails taking the shape of question marks.

"Why are you calling her Akira, her name is Sailor Mercury, she's never been any Akira!" Sailor Venus protested, while Akira resorted to facepalming again, this time even more miserably.

The Mysterious Mahou Shoujo with dark hair flinched a few times despite her cold composure, but the saintly smiling pink haired partner just asked Makie, "But, don't you think those parents would also be pitiable if their daughters were keeping secrets from them, like kissing people and risking their lives behind their backs?"

"Poo," Makie waved a hand, "it's not the same thing at all! Obviously the girl is much more of a victim!"

Silence.

"What?" Makie said. "She would be, wouldn't she? Anyway, this is all pointless because this is all really only a movie, and this Sailor Mercury is only Akira-chan in a costume, and Sailor Venus is her voleyball playing friend, and Sailor Mars is Mana-san's helper at the shrine."

"Sasaki-san, please," the teacher inhaled, "don't try and insult my intelligence. For starters, I've dealt several times with Tatsumiya-san and her assistant, and there is no way this girl can be her. Munakata-kun is much shorter, and much more childlike, with a far whinier voice and-"

Then he paused, realized the sinister black aura flowing from the glowering Sailor Mars and, being no stranger to being in that very same kind of situation with women, wondered aloud, "It **is** Munakata-kun, isn't it."

At this point even Venus had to nod, while Mars ground her teeth together and seethed venomously from between them.

The pink haired Mysterious Magical Girl sighed. "Okay. You win, Makie-chan. We aren't making any of this any easier by keeping more secrets from you even now. The truth is... I'm your mother."

"What," Shiho said, abruptly breaking from her teeth grinding and seething.

Ako choke violently in her own saliva.

"... whu?" Mei babbled, her eyes reduced to dots.

"... huh?" Takane added, reaching over to tightly squeeze her hand.

"Nothing shocks me anymore," Wataru decided very blandly.

"Oh, I knew I knew you!" Makie only nodded, sounding completely vindicated. "And you are Homura-mama, aren't you?" she asked the Mysterious Dark Haired Magical Girl.

The Mysterious Dark Haired Magical Girl simply pulled one of her small handguns out and aimed it at her own temple, but Madoka gently made her lower it back at once. "Yes, she is," she confirmed, "and these are our real forms. I suppose we should explain a few things for the whole lot of you now. But first a warning. A lot of the pleasure of any story is the questions left unanswered. Most of those questions from the previous story will now be told, and even though there may be new questions raised to replace them, it might ruin your enjoyment of that older tale. Knowing this, decide if you really want to proceed."

"Proceed to what!?" Takane asked.

"What previous story?!" Shiho asked.

"Sorry!" Madoka apologized, lightly bopping herself on the head with a fist. "Sometimes I forget quotations lose so much when taken out of their original context!"

"Madoka, you aren't Sanjou Kozue," Homura reminded her, "Thank goddess."

"Who, who is Sanjou Kozue?" Mei whimpered, eyes almost spinning in place.

"All right," Madoka said. "We begin not too long after the last story ended, in a certain dorm room."

"YOU'RE DOING IT AGAIN!" Takane pointed out.

* * *

Akamatsu Ken and Kodansha created and own _Mahou Sensei Negima!_

* * *

 **Further Side Conquests of an Accidental Stud Monkey.**

 **The Fanfic that Makes your Bones Stronger and your Boners Even More So.**

 **Based on the Original by Darkenning.**

 **(strikethrough) Proofreaded (/strikethrough) PROOFREAD by Darkenning.**

 **Visual Effects, Stunt Doubles and Catering supplied by Darkenning.**

* * *

 **Chapter One.**

 **I was the Teenage Daughter of a Teenage Magical Girl Goddess!**

* * *

And then the boy woke up.

It was a measure of how much he had, despite everything, grown accustomed to the recent changes in his life that Negi Springfield did not find himself wondering whether recent events had been simply a dream. Then again, considering the way that he was wrapped up in the sleeping and denuded forms of Akira, Makie and Twilight Sparkle, any such imagination would have had the lifespan of the proverbial infernal snowball. Negi himself had reverted to his actual, pre-adolescent (or possibly very early adolescent) persona while sleeping, but that had not stopped them from cozying up to him in what he genuinely hoped had been unconscious instinct.

A vote in favor of such hope passed the polls a moment or so later. After having delicately and deliberately disentangled himself from the sleeping girls without disturbing their dormancy, he saw Makie's sleeping form proceed to sleep-cuddle up to Akira, nuzzling against the swimmer's motherly breasts and unthinkingly wrapping her lips around a nipple. He watched this entire process in silence, feeling a strange mixture of regret and envy as he did, then sighed and crept over to the ladder leading down from his nook.

* * *

It was Takane who was able to interrupt the narration first, since everyone else (but Makie, who simply sat listening intently, and Homura, who just sat hiding her beet red face between her hands in ultimate shame) had only fallen into a completely stupefied, numb and horrified silence. "WHAAAAAA-AAAAAT?!" the tall and busty blonde screamed as loud as she could. "Wait a second, Kaname-san! What kind of morbid, sick jest is this?! I thought for a second you were going to make things clear about yourself, but instead you start making dirty up stories about your own alleged daughter, one of her friends, Negi-sensei, and someone with an obvious pornstar name?!"

How she knew that much about pornstar names will be left as an exercise for the imagination of the reader.

Madoka calmly wagged a finger. "No, no, no, no, this is no hoax, no dream, no imaginary story! This really happened to the Negi-kun of an alternate universe, the one from where Homura-chan and I came. Well, it wasn't our original universe, actually, but we lived there for a while. Anyway, that's not really important now, what matters is, that Negi-kun was, as a matter of fact, Maki-chan's father."

"What?" Akashi let out a strangled whimper, his glasses completely fogged up. Yuuna had, in the meanwhile, recovered enough as to support Akira's weight, since the tall swimmer was drooping to a side, threatening to fall all the way down while her face twitched and her eyes spun in opposite directions.

"It's simple, really," Makie piped in. "And Twilight Sparkle was no star of, um, no star of anything. She was, from what Mama told me, a pony princess from the world of magic who-"

"Your father slept with _**a pony**_ too?" Shiho grimaced horribly, slowly edging away from the table.

"Oh, that's no problem, by then she had assumed a human form," Madoka waved away the unimportant issue easily. "Just be patient with me, will you? This is important, since I want to show you how Negi-kun and Makie-chan's lives were like after we left them, but I can't tell you at length about what happened before that or I might make you change history. Anyway, as I was saying-"

* * *

In the dim light of morning that made its way into the dorm room through its main window, Negi could see Chisame's ankle and Ayaka's unmistakable hair dangling from the upper bunk bed while Konoka and Setsuna occupied the lower. His breath quickened a little bit at that sight, as a certain absence registered, and he looked about somewhat madly. Despite his wish for silence, he couldn't help but let out a rather noisy sigh of relief as he caught sight of the couch.

And, more particularly, the orange haired girl, hair decs momentarily absent, who was couched out on that couch.

* * *

"Okay," Yuuna said. "Now I see you're clearly insane and making shit up after all, because I think you are saying Asuna was involved in something related to Negi and sex, which is just plain bogus." Then she shuddered in a horrible realization. "Wait, wait, what, don't tell me, that horrible parallel universe you're talking about -"

"Not the same one you were in that one time," Homura declared, removing her hands from her face just long enough as to raise a pointer finger to remark her statement.

"There's more than one perverted weirdo universe like that?!" Yuuna screamed in panic.

"I beg your pardon?" Her father barely could move his face enough as to give her a weakly haunted questioning glance.

Ako rasped very uncomfortably. "W-Well, you'll see, shortly before the trip to Kyoto, something... strange happened and briefly took us to a few alternate dimensions. I was stranded in this weird but kind of cute world where we all were kindergarten students, and Negi-kun was our grown-up teacher, but then... well, we were saved by someone and brought back, but maybe we should talk about that some other day?"

"..." Akashi-sensei said, glasses rolling down his face.

"I mean, it'd be mean to interrupt Kaname-san's story just so we can rant about our own experiences," Ako lamely offered.

Madoka nodded. "Thank you very much, Ako-chan. Anyway, yes, that was that world's Asuna-san, and Negi-kun went to her and-"

* * *

 _"I love you,"_ he whispered to Asuna. _"I love you, I love you, I love you ..."_

 _"I love you, too,"_ she whispered back, eyes still shut.

Negi flushed. "Ummm," he said softly. "I, I thought you were -"

His lips were stilled as her mismatched eyes opened up and a hand came up to press against them, holding them closed for a moment before sitting up and leaning forward to replace the hand with lips of her own. All without a word more spoken.

He ruined it as she pulled back to gaze at him. "I'll get the pills," he began to say.

She shook her head just once. "I love you," she said, and the hand that had held his lips moved to hold something else. That said, she kissed him again, this time on his chin, holding him tightly and pulling him onto the couch with her.

Some trace of decency within him still rebelled. "I don't know -" he said as he pressed up against her as she continued to kiss down his throat, his chest, his stomach.

"Love you," she repeated, and took his tiny member into her mouth. He shuddered as he felt a swelling he had both experienced many times before and at the same time never known before.

"Ah," he gasped. "A-A-Asuna ..."

* * *

There was a loud thud, and all eyes in the room travelled away from Madoka and her sort of all too enthusiastic narration, towards the limp form of Akira that had just hit the carpet, lights knocked out of her by the shock.

"... weakling," Minako muttered while touching her own nose again and again with her formerly white, now totally crimson-soaked handkerchief, carefully pampering the overflowing nasal tissue.

* * *

It was a measure of how much she had, despite everything, embraced the recent changes in her life - indeed, so enthusiastically that one could only wonder what despite everything might refer to - that Kagarazuka Asuna did not react with surprise when she emerged from the toilet to find Negi Springfield-

Oops, sorry. Wrong Kagurazaka Asuna. While that alternate Asuna's story continued with Madoka-san's tale continue unfolding mentally scarring all those currently not unconscious enough as to sleep through it, now we briefly move away from it to show you what the Asuna of a certain other universe was doing at the time, all the while urging you to read Darkenning's story to fill in the blanks of his Asuna's development. I mean, we are urging you. Not Asuna herself. Um. Well, like we were saying...

"Now what are you guys doing here?" an annoyed Asuna asked after emerging from the toilet to find Negi, Kotaro and Chao in her living room, the wolfboy already stuffing his mouth with the snacks a smiling Konoka was serving them from one of those trays she always kept at hand for such situations. Always somehow managing to keep them well hidden from Asuna, of course, much to the latter's frustration. "Wait, I know, something went wrong with the haunted house, didn't it? I'll be there with you in a-"

Negi quietly raised a hand to interrupt her offer. "That's very generous from you, Asuna-san, but we only wanted for a place where to discuss a few things with Chao-san. Things you and Konoka-san might be interested in hearing about, as well."

"What?" Asuna blinked before squinting and frowning. "Are you sure that's something you couldn't be discussing over at Chao's? Or in your own room, for that matter?"

Kotaro shrugged between chews. "Negi doesn't want to disturb his missus unless totally necessary. Always scared of her, yanno."

"I'm not!" Negi said. "And don't call her my 'missus', either! Please show her some respect!"

"Yeah, scared the hell out of her," Asuna confirmed with a nod, while sitting by Konoka's side. "Okay then, so tell me why we must get your fat out of the fire this time. What have you done now, Chao-san?"

"I'm only a victim of circumstances!" Chao said, a hand on her own heart. "I was harassed and chased around with no good explanation whatsoever!"

Negi nodded and added, "And it was Skuld-san's older sister who did it. Who vanished away after facing us, still giving us no good explanation about what she wanted from Chao-san."

"So go talk it over with Skuld-san, then," Asuna said before remembering something. "Wait, isn't that sister of hers some sweet angel of utimate purity she's always praising? Doesn't sound like the type to go around chasing people, even if those people are Chao."

"What have I ever done to you?!" Chao wanted to know.

"Different sister," Kotaro said. "And Negi here thinks that goddess classmate of yours... wouldn't want to be that open about it either. Mysterious ways they move, and all that. So, since Konoe-san is the Headmaster's granddaughter, and you're some sort of important person if what the old demon hinted at is true -"

"- we thought you should be two of the first to learn of what's going on before we consider whether sharing it with the rest is for the better," Negi finished for him.

Asuna took a hand to her scalp and scratched. "Especially before facing Chisame's nagging, huh? To be fair, now I understand how she must always feel when you're taking your crap to her. Dammit, why not taking it to Eva first anyway? She'll be so pissed off when she learns you went to us before consulting her, and she'll find a way to blame me!"

As we can see, this Asuna still needed a lot of the maturing the other Asuna already had reached, and we don't mean it in a sexual sense.

"Asuna, please, you should feel honored they think of us this highly," Konoka gently chided before smiling sweetly at Chao, her chin resting on a hand. "We'll be glad to help you, Chao-san! So just tell us what is bothering you and why those overbearing divine people were bothering you!"

Chao blinked. "How did you know there were more than one?"

"Silly, why would a goddess move around Earth chasing wealthy martial artists without extra help to show off?" Konoka lightly laughed. "That doesn't sound very logical, doesn't it?"

"Uhhhh," Chao said, wondering how even now Konoe always found ways to surprise and puzzle her. "I'm telling you, I'm not very sure of anything myself-yo. I don't know what you expect me to say."

"Please tell us tell us tell us, we can't help you otherwise, please tell us!" Konoka began cooing oh so adorably, leaving closer to the increasingly concerned Lingshen.

"Oh," Asuna said softly. "Now I understand why you came to us first." She gave Negi a subdued accusing look. "You are a crafty little evil thing pretending to be a saint, you disgusting little troll, you."

"I have no idea what are you talking about, please don't disrespect your teachers like that," Negi piously said while ignoring the far more barbed stares Chao was giving him now.

* * *

It was not often you'd see a purple and green car roaming down the highways of Japan, even after The Cataclysm, when customs had relaxed considerably from the old days, and eccentricities had become far more of a common coin. It was something even more garish and unusual than it would have been in the West.

Still, the confident nature of the Japanese authorities, used to long periods of relative peace where even the conflicts of the emerging young women with strange powers tended to leave little to nothing in the way of casualties, meant no one would bother to stop said car to ask for any specifics unless the driver started doing something like randomly shooting at passerbys out their window.

Whistling to himself, with a gloved hand on the steering wheel and the other in a handgun that rested at his side, the Joker, Clown Prince of Crime, suddenly said, "You know, what's with Japanese highways? Where are the kids asking for a lift when you need them for target practice? I swear this trip's just a bore. Who had this awful idea, again, so I can shoot them instead?"

"You did," Poison Ivy, Tsukuyomi, Temptress, Ruri and Quartum all said from the back seat, at the same time, in matching unamused tones. They all were very cramped back there, which was not exactly helping their festive spirits.

"So I did!" Joker reminisced, then chuckled as he aimed the gun's barrel at his own temple. "Guess that means I'll have to shoot myself. One of these days," he promised, lowering the gun back. "How much longer 'til Mahora, Harley?"

The young woman sitting by his side looked up from the very wrinkled and wide map she held in her hands, giving him a sheepish look from behind her sunglasses, which had slightly slid down her nose. "I honestly have no idea, Puddin'. I can't make tails or heads outta this crummy map!"

"Might it be," Temptress spoke, "because it's in Japanese?"

The woman with the blond pigtails hummed and gave the map another long hard look. "That might have somethin' to do with that, yeah."

"Heh. That was actually sorta funny," Joker chuckled, because he was in a good mood that day. Otherwise he'd have kicked her out of the car the spot. Without bothering to slow down, of course. "Well, might as well tell you kids a story to pass the time while we get there. It's a story I... or someone who might've been me... heard a long, long time ago, or maybe a long, long time into the future. Although I think there's a good chance you know it as well, Temptress, so it could just bore you. But, as my mother used to say, TOUGH!"

The small and pretty Servant frowned, annoyed her overwhelming charms somehow never worked on that bloke. Otherwise she'd have made him actually shoot himself long ago. "What do you mean, Joker-san?"

Joker sighed as both of his hands rested on the driving wheel. "It's a story I once dreamed of, while waiting for the drugs to wear off in the padded room. Sometimes, when you're on a real good high and you can see past God with the eyes of clean lucidity, you hear stories like that. It's a story about a boy, much like that boy we met at Kyoto, and his gang of merry pals, much like that gang we also ran into there."

"Oooohhhhh!" Tsukuyomi cooed, perking up into attention. "I like the sounds of that! Can you work my Oneesama into it?"

Joker nodded. "Sure I can, Toots, and I might just do it, too! It's a story about what happened when that boy won the hearts of every girl around him, you'll see, because that boy was a bonafide playah."

"Just like a story told by a man," Ivy sneered disgustedly.

And Tsukuyomi pouted. "Oneesama, falling for a simp wimp of a boy? Hardly so, I think. There'd better be a neat twist to this, Joker-han!"

"Oh, there will, there will!" he promised, grinning while pushing the brim of the wide hat shadowing his starkly white face up. "Now just be a good little bad girl and let me start. One of those girls was a deceiver and a cheater with a two-timing heart. She also was the kind who liked to disguise herself as others to achieve her goals. Or her man's goals, since the worst part about her was, she didn't even have any actual goals of her own, other than making her men happy. What a stupid, boring girl!"

"Now that we might agree on," Ivy nodded sagely while Harley cringed, hiding her face back into the map's folds.

Meanwhile, Quartum only snorted with contempt and looked out the window, at the seemingle infinte gray plains stretching in the areas between the major schools and the cities built around them.

This would be a very long and trying trip.

He'd better get a lot to burn and wreck by the end of it.

* * *

 _Elsewhere, in another realm, at roughly the same time. More or less_.

"Watch out for that drop! It's a loooooooong trip down! Hya ha ha ha hah!" the Joker cackled as he punted the Batman's stomach and the Dark Knight Detective fell off the purple and green airship of the maniac, hurtling down towards the streets beneath.

Instantly looking away from the quickly plummeting figure, the Clown Prince pushed aside the pirate garbed henchman currently at the helm of the garish ship, then took the controls himself, loudly singing to himself as he steered the flying vehicle towards the Wayne Towers. _"Oooohhhh, though you see me now a mere ghost of a man, I once had the heart of a lion. Commanded my ship between many a shore, the ol' Jolly Roger a-flyin'!"_

Another nearby henchman blinked, took a good long at the ship's course, then asked the gang's leader, "Hmmm, Boss, I thought the idea behind this was-"

Without looking back, the Joker, a hand still at the helm, used the other to swiftly draw a flintlock and shoot the unfortunate man off the edge. _"Mine was a name that struck fear into men, and regret into plenty of lasses. Oh, how I wish I could take back those days, as I stare at these empty beer-glasses!"_

As for the Batman, he had been falling only for the span of a blink or two when he drew his grappling gun out, using it to attach himself to a building's flagpole and stop his fall. However, before he could climb up the tower to its rooftop to keep in pursuit, he saw a human figure in blue and red suspended in the air before him. "You," he snarled.

The Man of Steel offered him a hand. "Looks like you could use some help. You aren't going to make a number about it this time, are you?"

The Batman looked towards the Joker's bizarre pirate airship in the distance before sighing in frustration. "Go get him."

"Consider it done." And then he was gone in a flash that combined both primary colors in a striking purple blaze.

 _"My ship was the last sight that many would see,"_ the Joker merrily sang, _"as we narrowed the gap with our quarry. The sound of the cannons and splintering wood, would herald our paths into-!"_

Then he shook on his feet as he felt the ship coming to a sudden, unexpected halt before reaching their destination. _"- glory?"_ he weakly finished, then lifted his gaze just enough as to see a stern man in colorful tights frowning down at him, arms folded before his muscular chest.

Joker smirked impishly. "Oh dear! Peter, it's been a while! You sure have grown up a lot!"

Minutes after, Batman and Superman stood on a rooftop with an unconscious Joker and his crew tightly tied around them.

"Thanks," the Bat dryly said.

"Think nothing of it," Superman shrugged vaguely.

There was a short silence.

"Go ahead," Batman said. "Say it already."

"Say what?" Superman asked innocently.

"Asking what's wrong with me, since I'm thanking you. And then noting how I've been acting strange since the latest Crisis, and how you're worried about me. That's what brought you to Gotham in the first place, isn't it?"

"Well, I'll admit Diana might have said a few things that gave us pause for concern, but-"

"Us?"

"Everyone in the League has noticed you two had been acting strangely before that, Batman. We might not be the World's Greatest Detectives, but we aren't that oblivious either."

"Hnh."

"And then there's that rumor mill from Avengers Mansion, about what Iron Man allegedly did at that school... It took a lot for us to reign Ollie from storming there and asking for Stark's head."

"You should have told me. Oliver might have used the help."

"Batman. I'm serious," Superman scowled.

There was another short silence.

The Batman looked down at his city. "I'm not proud about what any of us did back there, and I'd rather not talk about it."

Superman just kept on waiting.

"You can take Joker to Arkham this time," the Bat said, shooting a Batline across the street and swinging away into the night.

The most powerful man on Earth just stood powerlessly, far from the first time, while seeing how the man he considered one of his best friends despite everything retreated back into his own misery.

"Normally," the Joker said, opening a sickly yellowish green eye, "I'd say he needs to get laid, but why do I get the impression that wouldn't help at all in this case? Heh heh."

"Shut up," Superman told him.

"You'll walk me home tonight, then? Well, it'll feel wrong, no doubt, but I'll try anything at least once. You shoulda told me you'd be coming tonight, though, and I'd have invited, I don't know, Metallo, for a double date..."

Superman looked down at the ill man, who chuckled to himself while rolling on his side, as if entertaining the most amusing thoughts in the world. "Sometimes I have to wonder," he confessed, "which one of us knows him better."

"Oh, that'd be me," the Joker replied without hesitation. "We've been together from the start. I can read him like an open book by now. And I've spent most of my life surrounded by psychiatrists, remember. You end up picking a few tips of the biz. If I were you, I'd poison myself with Kryptonite, I mean, I'd be taking my dear buddy to therapy. More than I'd usually do, that is."

Superman huffed as he picked him up and tossed him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes."No, seriously, do that," the clown insisted. "He isn't that funny when he's going through one of these stages. It makes the game all too easy."

* * *

"The truth, decided the consummate liar known as Luna, Shiori, Asuna and a few other long-term aliases, as she licked and sucked at a twelve-year old boy's member, was a tricky thing," Kaname-san kept on narrating, while her listeners just kept on paying attention with stunned, dazed looks that definitely weren't all there anymore. All the while, Yuuna just kept the prone Akira's head on her lap, a hand resting on the swimmer's scalp, and Minako was receiving a new handkerchief from an Akashi-sensei who was doing his best to not look at her, to kept on cleaning her leaking, red-caked nose. "She supposed that it had to be, given that fate (and also, ah-hah, Fate-san) had given her a power which enabled her abilities of deception... so that she could fight for a higher truth, a greater good, of course, or so she had been constantly assured. Clearly, this demonstrated that lies and deception were of equal value when compared to truth in the eyes of whatever ambiguously-existential beings decided such matters, and so she should take no shame in them, either."

"Wow," Shiho quietly said. "You are ... well, you're a freaking pervert, but also a very, very good narrator, Kaname-san. You speak almost as if reading from a prose novel."

Madoka smiled at her and nodded. "Thank you! You can take notes if you want! Especially since we'll probably be wiping your exact memories of this tale after we're done. All you need is a general understanding of our overall background, but knowing who Shiori-san is before actually meeting her ... well, that might cause some problems in the continuum."

"Why are you telling them to take notes if we're going to mindwipe them afterwards?" a grumpy Homura asked.

"Silly," Madoka playfully replied. "So we can take the notes back with us, of course! Munakata-san is right, I'm outdoing myself here, and it'd be a shame if this narrative was lost! Maybe I'll write a novel or something, after changing the names, of course."

"I think I'd be actually grateful if our memories of this are wiped, yes," Takane nodded numbly.

"Do I, do I, get with, with Negi-kun..." Ako stammered clumsily, cheeks flaring.

"That's not you, Izumi-san, just someone who happens to be just like you," Madoka reminded her. "Anyway, this was at least how Shiori-san justified employing one of her alternate identities to seduce Negi Springfield, one of the two people (or, as she'd realized not long ago, one of the two instances of the same person) to whom she was most attracted. (Except for... well, never mind that.) Other girls - wicked, wicked, treacherous girls - might have been quicker to offer themselves to him once he'd been temporarily aged into young adulthood, but now that that lie had been dispelled, she was the first to offer herself to him in this true self. Admittedly, she was doing so while enmeshed in a lie herself, which might turn the whole thing around from right to wrong once more if it was looked at the right way. Or the wrong way."

Madoka paused.

"Or something," she added. "Regardless, the presence of the true instance of what she was pretending to be nearby and somewhat more distantly involved - kissing at the ears of Negi-san (whom, having had him inside her, she supposed she should address as Negi-sama) and holding him tightly as though he would flee if she did not - might have dismayed her, but for two things. The first and most important of those two things was that LunaShioriAsunaEtc was almost entirely focused on her immediate goal of pleasuring Negi-san/-sama, and could utterly disregard what was happening around her if it didn't contribute to that goal. And the second of those things... Well... it made the first of those things a lie, actually. But she was sort of used to that."

"So," Yuuna interrupted, "why this Luna Shiori Whatever girl was pretending to be Asuna in the first place? I don't get it. Did it have anything to do with what that crazy Count-"

"Which Count?!" her father asked.

"That's not important right now!" Madoka waved a hand. "And anyway, the second of those things was that she was aware that it wasn't even that she was attracted to the same person, separated into two different bodies. She knew that despite their similarities, Negi and Fate were two very different people, with a deep and fundamental commonality. And it was that commonality which attracted her to both of them, and which also attracted her to people like Sakurako, and was now also attracting her to Princess Asuna, as well. This commonality did not speak particularly well of her, but it was the higher truth behind her actions, and it could not be denied. She was attracted to power."

Madoka paused. Again.

"Or something," she added. Again.

"You really enjoy doing this, don't you," Homura flatly accused.

Madoka smiled like the warm sun. "Since the dawn of time, creation of new life has been associated with the creation of the stories that accompany it, Homura-chan. Is it any wonder that, after taking over as the Goddess of Magical Girls, I wanted to take on an aspect of that dual fertilty?"

Homura, who was the Devil of Magical Girls associated with untold finalities and grim resolutions that went unvoiced, had no actual answer for that.

"I repeat, I want out," Shiho looked at Minako again. "If this weirdo's really the Goddess of our business, is there much of a point to it?"

"Shhhhh!" Venus hushed her, then bopped a hand on the table. "Less rabbling and more smut! Um, I mean, more decisive information on our shared future!"

Madoka nodded and obeyed. "And so, once she had licked and sucked and teased and taunted Negi's negi until it was hard - not as hard as it was when the illusion of adulthood was upon him, but hard nonetheless - EtcAsunaShioriLuna rose up, drew her body along Negi's until their crotches enmeshed and then pulled him up into her, all the while leaning past his head to rain kisses down on the true Asuna's face. Not until those kisses drew a sound of pleasure from the Princess' throat did she begin to rock and roll on Negi. She might be a lie and a liar, but she would give them the best that she had, nonetheless."

Madoka paused.

"Or something!" she added.

"Princess?!" Yuuna yelped. "I knew it, she's that girl the Count and that Jadeite gay guy were rabbling about, isn't she?! She's... the Princess of the Silver Millenium of the Moon!"

"Wrooooong!" Madoka said.

"Luna is a very pretty name," Artemis suddenly mused aloud. And then said nothing else.

Minako looked down at him. "Any special reason behind that particular statement?"

Artemis quickly shook his head, feigning innocence. "None at all! Just keep on going with your moralizing fables of ubelievable debauchery, please! Pay no attention to the talking cat!"

* * *

 _Meanwhile (or a reasonable alternate parallel timeline approximation) in the world which was the setting of the stories told by Madoka-san and the (driving, non captured) Joker, this was happening_.

"Well, if it isn't Takahata-sensei," Takashiro Hiroko smiled, looking up from her latest batch of reviews as the taller, older teacher walked in, closing the door behind himself discreetly. "To what do I owe this visit? Came to give me good news about Minamoto-sensei?"

"Yes. She isn't pregnant," the man said, before coughing softly with a fist on his mouth. Delicately, he added, "Not that it is any business of mine, but I think I should be asking-"

The stunning red haired woman shook her head as she gestured for him to take a seat. "I was left sterile after the demon raped me, Sensei. I thought you knew that already?"

"Oh!" He couldn't help gasping; even though he was a hardened veteran, his upbringing had left him still very open to the suffering of women and not as able to deal with it as he could with anything else. "I, I am sorry, no, I honestly had no idea. I shouldn't have..."

"It's okay. I wouldn't make for a very good mother anyway," the other Arts teacher told him softly. "Sorry to have asked you about Minamoto-sensei first. That was an impulse I shouldn't have followed on. But, I imagine that was not the actual reason behind your visit."

"Indeed," Takamichi T. Takahata confirmed. "I'm here to talk about Kitami-sensei."

"Or rather," she said, "why Kitami-sensei seems to have vanished altogether, leaving no traces behind, at the same time a much younger version of herself appeared amongst us."

"You knew her better than anyone else still here," Death Glasses said. "Do you really think that's actually her?"

"Hard to say, but I'd feel safe saying she thinks she is," Hiroko informed. "I have spoken with her thrice already, and while she doesn't remember... the ordeals she went through, she still recognized me, or rather, the girl I once was."

"What do you mean?"

Hiroko smiled. "I used an age altering pill to show myself to her as a teenager. She was very surprised, actually; she didn't even remember the first thing about magic being real."

Takahata exhaled softly, placing his hands on his knees. "And to think once they'd have turned us into ermines for a quarter of all of this."

"Even before these events, I have done things that would merit far more than transfiguration and exile," Hiroko reminded him.

"And so did she, even if we never could prove it."

"I know. That's why the Headmaster insisted on keeping her around despite everything. Better to keep her where she could be watched than anywhere else. Still, maybe it's just my guilt talking, but I'm not sure we should hold her misdeeds against the girl now bearing her name. Regardless of her being the real Kitami Reika or not."

"All the same, I think we need to know," he insisted. "Any ideas how to know?"

She hummed, placing a hand on her chin. After a moment, she said, "Perhaps we should pay the temple a visit."

"I was afraid you'd say that," Takahata confessed.

"Look at it this way," she told him, getting up while reaching for her coat, since it was late already and it was chilly outside. "I think we both could use a little communion with the deities to ease our karma."

Now that, he couldn't argue with.

* * *

 _Back at a world Fate Averruncus would have greatly preferred, where Negi Springfield hadn't had sex with even a single one of his students. Yet_.

"Well, she's impressive, I'll give her that much," Asuna said after Chao was gone. "I've never met anyone who could stand the horrors of Konoka's Niceness Questioning."

Konoka, meanwhile, sat nearby while holding a small mirror closely before her face, carefully examining her own features. "What went wrong?" she wondered aloud. "I should have gotten something, anything, out of her. Be honest, please, have I changed at all? Maybe... maybe I'm not as cute as before?"

"What?" Negi snapped back to attention from his troubled thoughts. "No, Konoka-san! You're just as cute as ever! That is, I'd say you get even cuter every day!"

Konoka blinked, looked towards him, and smirked cattily. And cutely. "Whyyyy, Negi-kuuuuun! Don't tell me you're going to take Grandpa on that offer!"

"What?!" Negi squealed, eyes bugging out.

"Konoka," Asuna dryly said.

Konoka took a hand to her own cheek and giggled. "Because I wouldn't mind at all! I'll feel a bit sorry for Chisame-chan, but well, she has Tsunetsuki-sempai, so she'll endure, right?"

"What?!" Negi repeated himself, growing redder.

"Konoka. That isn't funny," Asuna warned.

Konoka began cooing as her hand rubbed the cheek. "I'm so honored, really! I'm sure we'd make a lovely couple!"

"... what about Setsuna-san?" Negi finally finished his stuck sentence, far more quietly.

Asuna's pigtails stood in point. "Don't tell me you're taking her seriously!"

Negi gave her a helpless look. "Of, of course not, that'd be improper between a student and teacher after all, I'm only asking what she'd do about-"

"I'll tell you when you're older, Negi-kun," Konoka wagged a pointer finger, seemingly satisfied. "Well, you can read minds, can't you? If you're so worried about Chao-chan and what she's up to, then just touch her and read her thoughts!"

"I couldn't!" Negi protested. "That'd be an unforgivable violation of Chao-san's privacy!"

"Geez, you're sure hard to please," Konoka pouted. "In that case, just make a Pactio with Nodoka-chan so she gets a mind reading book like Psycho Purple-san's. Then she can do it for you!"

"I'd still be responsible!" Negi cried, arms flailing around.

"Do all of your answers for Negi's troubles involve him kissing or marrying someone?" Asuna asked her roommate.

"Of course," Konoka matter-of-factly stated. "The Power of Love solves everything, you know."

Negi sighed, shaking his head and getting back up, reaching for his jacket. "Never mind. Sorry for making you waste your time, and thanks for your efforts anyway. I see I'll have to find another way to get through Chao-san and Skuld-san before they do anything they might regret. I'm sure Skuld-san will be more reasonable in this instance."

Asuna half-chuckled. "Skuld. Yeah. Right."

It was Negi's turn to pout. "All the same, Asuna-san, Konoka-san, I'd be thankful if this stayed a secret between us for the time being. I don't want to involve anyone else, especially Satomi-san, before I learn exactly what are we dealing with."

"Oooooh, a secret between us!" Konoka batted her eyelashes teasingly. "Yet another step towards our union, Negi-kun! You sure know how to play a girl!"

"Konoka!" Asuna huffed in frustration, before frowning at Negi. "As for you, brat, you know I don't like being your secret keeper. I think Chisame should be told, at least. I mean, she's your caretaker! I won't feel right keeping this from her!"

"I'd bet she'd do it to you if your roles were reversed," Konoka mused aloud.

"Well, yeah, I don't care, because I'm not her kind of person!" Asuna protested. Before Negi could interject about not judging Chisame that way, she turned back to him. "Two days," she warned him. "That's all I'm giving you as a proof of my good will. If by then you haven't settled things with Chao,. I'm telling Chisame, because she's the only one who can stop you from doing stupid risky things! Sometimes."

Negi nodded. "Fair enough. Thank you again, Asuna-san. Konoka-san," he quickly bowed and left before Asuna could find anything else to tell him.

Konoka giggled again. "That's the most lovely thing about boys, isn't it? How they can get themselves so tangled in their own problems like that."

"Yeah, lovely," Asuna grunted. "And without us, how could they ever get themselves outta them?"

"So," Konoka suggested, "it falls on us to help our Negi-kun out of this as best as we can..."

"'Our' Negi-kun?" Asuna hummed darkly.

Konoka smiled and lightly punched her on an arm. "Fine. Just mine, then."

"That's not what I meant!"

"Okay, okay! Ours, in that case! Geez, Asuna, make your mind up already!"

"Grrrrr!"

* * *

 _And back at the other world!_

"So, where's Father now, anyway?" one of the children asked, looking in all directions. It really didn't matter which one of them, exactly, had asked it, since it was the question in the minds of all of them, and this one had just happened to voice it before the rest of them.

Chao Lingshen sighed heavily, wondering what had she done to deserve being saddled with this. Well, technically she knew perfectly well what she had done, but she had begun wondering rather seriously if this karmic punishment actually fit her transgressions. Maybe she should attempt heading back and trying her luck with the Justice Legion instead.

At the very least, she had Satsuki at her side through this ordeal, just like always.

"Your Father," Yotsuba told the children, sitting by Chao's and gently adressing the not so small crowd gathered around the Chao Bao Zi, "has been going through very taxing times lately, so he's taking a short while to rest and relax before dealing with his new added responsibilities, yourselves included. I know you're eager to see him, but please be patient and he'll be with us sooner than you realize."

"In other words," the little girl who looked like a tiny Tatsumiya Mana in a summer dress dryly said, "he's making sure the rest of us are conceived?"

"I sure hope so," the boy who claimed to be Anya's son sort of bitterly said. "My conception date is quite early, and I'd hate for it to pass without, well, it happening. I like existing, you know!"

"We don't know yet if that'd make you blink from existence altogether or just reappear in a different, temporally altered version of yourself, Otouto-chan," lectured the girl who looked remarkably and disturbingly like Shiguma Rika. "All Rika knows is Nagase-Imouto's mother can't be one of those undergoing those fabled pleasures herself right now, as Rika's devices are detecting her watching presence nearby."

A loud thud of someone coming down from a close tree was heard, while the children who turned their heads back in time could see the quickest glimpse of a tall curvy body landing in a perfect facefault among thick concealing bushes.

"Mooooom," the girl who looked like a shorter, paler Kaede with reddish shades to her hair groaned in embarrassment, before breaking into a short fit of coughing.

"Wow," Chao arched an eyebrow. "You're good, Rika-chan."

Rika smiled and pointed at one of her ears. "Rika only has to thank the sophisticated listening aids Rika's mother implanted into her to help Rika's struggle for survival!"

Chao nodded sagely. "I know how's that like. Well ... Alex-kun, right? I don't think you have anything to worry, since your mother should be one of those with your father right now."

Alex Springfield Cocolova's face reddened before he could feign a quick recovery and smile. "I, I, I see! Well, that's great to hear! Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I need to take a moment to-"

Anarchia, sitting at his right, grabbed him by a sleeve and pulling him back down, growled. "No fair going to peek, you perv! Your own mother, for Psyche's sake!"

"D-Don't misjudge me, woman!" her half-brother protested unconvincingly. "I was just going to visit the toilet!"

"Suuuuure you were," another boy, who reminded Chao a lot of a male Misa with short hair, but just as sophisticated and self-assured, chuckled at the shorter pre-teen. "It's okay, Alex-kun, it's not like I am going to criticize you!"

"Boys," the girl who looked like a strange cross between Negi and Sakurako, whom Fate had taken a sudden special dislike to as soon as he first saw her, rolled her eyes knowingly at the strangely younger and partially amnesic Kitami-sensei, who sat at the middle of the crowd with her fists on her lap, visibly troubled and confused. "Hard to believe they share our blood, right? Oh, I forgot, you aren't one of us, are you? Not that I mean to offend with that, just saying..."

"Ahem-ahem-ahem!" Chao imposed order by rasping loudly, tapping a foot several times.

The children went back to glare at her expectantly. Good, she thought. Surely she inspired a certain amount of respect on them, no doubt taken from her legend.

"... can I go back to my dorm room, now?" asked Kitami, who had no idea about that legend and thus was failing to show that respect. "Please?"

"Hey, Chao-neesan," the dark skinned girl who looked like some bizarre Illyasviel von Einzbern but with her colors reversed indolently addressed her. "Before you say anything else, I think there's something you should know. I've been keeping count of us, since you know, it looks like nobody else bothered, and I'm pretty sure there's one of us missing."

Chao and Yotsuba tensed up in alarm, and to their credit, so did most of the strange children.

"Really?" asked the sort of creepy boy named Nigel, eyeing Nikuro-san, as such was her apparent name, directly. "How can you be so sure of that? We come from different timelines, so-"

Nikuro chuckled while wagging a finger at him. Behind her, a lookalike of her but with the proper Illyasviel colors drooped her shoulders in a mortified pose, and a third little girl with darker hair wearing a skimpy maid outfit simply sat with a lack of expression. Nikuro smugly said, "Fu fu fu, you aren't the only one with many a secret to exploit under the sleeve, Nigel-kun! We are here because of the Third Magic, remember?" she asked, holding a pink scepter with wings up. The scepter briefly waved at the assembled children with its cute little wings, in a coquettish, bombastic fashion. "There's little that remains hidden from us by the veils of time!"

"Third Magic?!" Chao yelled, her usual absolute temperance and cool-headedness temporarily (never better said) shattered.

Ignoring her altogether, Nigel sneered at Nikuro. "Well, then you surely know where is that sibling of ours at the time being. Don't you?" he challenged her.

Nikuro smirked very cattily. "Well, as a matter of fact..."

* * *

 _And back at the OTHER other world..._

Negi quickened his steps as he marched through the now deserted streets of the campus, hoping to reach the laboratories before dinner time. Neither Skuld nor Yuuna had been at their room when he visited it to look for further answers, and while he could have contacted Yuuna to ask for her roommate, he, once again, didn't want to push the issue with her either until he got a clearer image of the full situation. In the meanwhile, he'd do better to go straight for the source of the dilemma, Skuld-san herself, and if she wasn't with Chao or Yuuna, odds were she could be found at her laboratory instead.

After looking around a few times, he decided the coast was clear enough he could get there flying on his staff. So he was beginning to pull it out from behind his back when someone abruptly plummeted from the sky and landed directly on his head, smashing him against the sidewalk rather painfully.

He hated it when people didn't take the proper magical turns at Albuquerque.

* * *

When Negi finally began slowly coming back from his stupor, the first thing on his mind was still his frustration over the whole Albuquerque magical turn thing, because if nothing else, he was consistent. However, that changed almost immediately, his prior thoughts swiftly brushed aside and forgotten when he saw exactly who stood over him on the lonely street where he had been knocked the proverbial fuck out.

There was a man in a long, raggedy cloak and hood, looking down at him with a soothing, calm expression. This was clearly visible, despite the shadows of his hood only allowing Negi to see from his jawline up to his nose, and none of the rest of his face . He had a staff like Negi's, the one his father had given him. And he was speaking, just loud enough to hear. "It's all right, Negi. It's going to be all right, now. The tide will soon start to turn, because of what you will do. It's going to be all right."

Then it finally dawned on Negi this man was actually reading such lines from a book he was holding at arm's lenght, with the hand not holding his staff, now that he wasn't looking down at him anymore, which had happened just as soon as he had noticed him beginning to wake up.

"What," was all Negi could say, too frozen by shock to even move anything but his lips.

The man smiled at him again. "Sorry about that. I had prepared such a fine speech for a similar occasion, I just couldn't let it go to waste! So I rewrote it a little; I hope you won't mind?"

Negi crawled back just a bit, only enough as to be able to sit up on the sidewalk, adjusting his glasses and looking up at the tall, mysterious stranger with eyes that felt oddly humid for some reason, all of a sudden. "What, what, who are you..."

"I am," the man told him, "flesh of your flesh and blood of your blood. And I am proud of you, and what you have become so far. That is all I am, for otherwise I am nothing but a shadow, a vague dream fluttering in the breeze, one that will soon vanish away, but will never stop watching over you, until the moment you need me again. That is what I am, Negi," he solemnly said, before quietly adding to himself, "Dammit, that was another great one. Give me a sec, please," and he started quickly writing it down on his little book before he would forget it.

This gave Negi enough time to hiccup a few times before latching onto the man's cloak, tightly, as if never wanting to let go. "Father! Is this really you, Father?!"

The man shook his head in silence, well knowing Negi was currently too busy burying his face into his cloak and weeping on it to see it. He might have been a bit of a shady bastard, but he still couldn't outright lie to a relative.

"Negi," he said instead, placing a hand on the boy's scalp. "I don't have a lot of time. I must leave soon, but I will leave you a gift before-"

"No! I won't let you go, no, no, never!" Negi cried while hugging his legs, prompting the man to sigh and gently use his staff as a crowbar to pry the rather strong little man from himself. He grunted as he did so.

"That is not the way your father would like to see you, Negi," the man had to remind him, while Negi sat back and rubbed his leaking nose, giving him a confused look.

"There is something I would like to ask you," Negi said then, well aware he was starting this conversation, although it technically had already started anyway, in what had to be one of the worst possible ways.

 _Oh God, I really hope he doesn't want to have sex with me. They said he had a huge father complex, but I never wanted to believe it'd be this bad_ , a mildly jaded and disgusted hooded stranger thought before patiently answering, "Then ask."

"Are... Have you been watching over me lately, while wearing an all white evening suit with a top hat, a baton and a cape? And while throwing black roses at those who would attack us?" Negi asked, managing to keep his voice somewhat steady.

"Black -" The eyes deep in the hood seemed to betray perplexity despite being hidden from Negi's sight. "Of course not! What kind of idiot with no self-respect would ever do something that ridiculous?!"

Somewhere else, Nekane Springfield sneezed loudly.

"Ah," Negi dazedly said, recovering more and more of his senses by the moment, albeit slowly. "Then, well, I really don't want to doubt you, but could you please, well, give me, I mean my friends, some proof you aren't some shapechanging demon or mutant creature? Because, you'll see, they are good intentioned, but often-"

"Look, just take this already, will you," the man mumbled, seemingly starting to grow tired of this situation, as he extended a golden watch with a long chain attached to it right before Negi's face.

Negi blinked. "For me?" he gulped. "W-Well, I'm honored! Now, at this point Chisame, that's one of those friends of mine, would say you're just trying to buy years of absence with a gift again, but I want you to understand, she won't really mean it when she tells you that, because -"

"Ah, yes, Chisame-chan. I know her!" the man rubbed his own chin after Negi accepted the watch with trembling hands. "I, I mean, I know of her, heh heh! Negi," he said, placing both hands on Negi's shoulders, making the boy look straight into where he guessed the eyes were inside of the hood. "She is a very fine girl."

Negi nodded. "I know, she's a loyal and caring friend and student, but-"

"Friend and student?! She's your partner, you dummy!" the hands on his shoulders began shaking him back and forth, while two crossing veins appeared for a moment within the folds of the hood. "And I want her to become your future permanent partner!"

Negi stiffened enough as to effectively resist the shaking altogether. "M-My permanent partner?!"

The man nodded solemnly. "You won't find a better wife!"

"M-M-My wife?!"

"... do you have any problems with her? Do you think she isn't good enough for you, boy?" the man asked, his voice abruptly growing quite chilling and dangerous, and Negi gasped and shook his head in response.

"I, I never said that! It's just that, well, don't you think it's still too early to think of marriage for either of us? And shouldn't Chisame get a saying on this too? I mean, I understand you, you would want grandchildren, but -!"

"Actually, I just want parents," the man briefly muttered to himself.

"Eh?"

"Nothing!" He quickly waved that aside, much to Negi's further increased confusion. "Now listen, Negi, that watch will allow you to perform wonders and miracles, but only during the Sports Festival. Until then, treasure it dearly. Once it comes, use it carefully. After it, well, toss it into a ditch for all I care. What I do care about is, make Chisame-chan happy and never dare abandon her!"

"I won't!" Negi promised. "If you want me to, I'll even cancel all my other alliances so she feels more-"

"Eeeeeehhhhh!" he interrupted him again. "I never said that!"

"But -!"

"Negi, as a matter of fact, you're going to need a lot of partners to tackle the shadows coming forth. How many do you have by now?"

"Um, well, there's Chisame, and Misora-san, and Satomi-san, and Misa-san, and Asuna-sa-"

"You will better contract with thirty one to fulfill your legend."

"- ut I'm not sure of how many of them you even know about, and- what?! Thirty one?!"

"That's what I just said," he nodded.

"But, but that's impossible!"

"There's nothing impossible for a son of the Thousand Master!"

"I know you could do it easily, but I'm not that powerful!"

"You're right on both of those accounts," the man admitted. "But then you should make yourself powerful enough as to support that many Pactios."

"If I become that poweful, why would I need all those Pactios in the first place? And if a son of yours can do anything, why can't I tackle those challenges in my future without them? And where have you been this whole time anyw-"

With a clear scowl that reminded Negi a lot of Chisame's, the man silenced him by covering his lips with his staff. And now keep your darn minds out of the gutter.

"Negi," the man said as he began to disappear in the late afternoon's cold breeze. "Just trust me, please. Chisame-chan... has a more generous heart than you suspect or she'd admit. As long as she's the first in your heart... then, by all means, make others happy as well..."

"You, you are sounding just like Chamo-kun! I mean, Father! FATHER! No!" he cried, trying to leap for him, to catch him in the strongest hug he could ever do...

... only to find himself kneeling on the sidewalk, hugging air and weeping to himself.

And he would stay that way for a long while.

* * *

"Damn, but you are a rat bastard," Nikuro was saying a few moments later, back at the other realm, shortly after he materialized among the others and voiced a short explanation most of them couldn't make any sense whatsoever of.

"Yeah, well, still not as bad as some others," Nara Springfield allowed, while giving Nigel a dirty, accusing side glare.

The other young man sneered, arms folded. All the while Chao and Satsuki just watched them with tiny solid black eyes resembling thick dots.

"Seriously, I think I'll get in trouble with the dorm proctor if I don't get back soon," said Kitami.

* * *

"Negi-sensei?"

The voice was not one Negi was familiar with, but the concern was still evident in the delivery, so he felt compelled to look up from his current kneeling position, to find himself looking at someone he knew by name, even if not by direct contact. But he'd made a point of learning the names and faces of as many students all across the schools as he could, and he'd remember this one well because of his last name, and what it meant for the whole magical community.

"Emiya-san?" he asked back, shame waking him up from his trance of grief, making him stand up in an awkward attempt to regain his poise. "What are you doing out so late?"

And not alone, Negi realized, for there was a female standing closely behind the tall, red haired young man. One mostly wrapped in a concealing, gray long overcoat, with a blue baseball hat obscuring most of her features. Truth be told, so much of her was hidden from sight Negi himself, months ago, wouldn't have been able to tell at first if that person happened to be male or female. But close constant contact with large numbers of females had sharpened such perceptions of his more than he'd care to admit or even acknowledge.

The woman with the delicate, beautiful half obscured features kept on looking sharply, emotionless, at him with her piercing green eyes while Emiya Shirou answered apologetically. "Oh, yeah, that, it isn't curfew time yet, is it? Sorry, um, we were... at the church right now."

"The church?" Negi blinked. "You mean-"

"The Mary Magdalene, yeah," Emiya admitted to the boy everyone in campus knew. He was supposed to be a genius, so in turn Shirou supposed it was no shock he not only would recognize him as well but would know he was no Catholic, judging from his confused tone. "It's a long story, but ... oh, oh, my manners!" He seemed all too happy to change the subject while gesturing toward the silent woman. "This is, well, a friend of mine, a new friend-"

Then he seemed to get stuck again, as if at a loss to announce his alleged friend's name.

"Saber," she said, flat and calculated, studying Negi's presence carefully. "You may call me Saber. Pleased to meet you, Professor. I have heard of you."

Tohsaka had been, after all, generous enough as to even give her a quick crash course on the local notables.

Then it struck Negi. Saber. That name. Now he knew why she'd seemed vaguely familiar to him, even through the haze of his current stupor. The memories of Kuro-san's exposition during the trip to Kyoto came back to him, triggering all sorts of alarm signs. Kuro-san had hinted at Emiya-san being her sibling back at her own world. And then, nights after that, Illyasviel von Einzbern herself had introduced herself to Negi, and said-

"Negi-sensei, are you okay?" Emiya-san asked him, now sounding even more worried, and Negi cursed himself inwardly. _Control_ , he urged himself, taking a hand to his lower face. _Now more than ever, you need control. This must be what your Father was preparing you for. Rise to the challenge, then. Don't let it show. Your fear. Your-_

He nodded mechanically. "Y-Yes. Sorry, Emiya-san. I just happened to have... a slight spell of sorts. I mean, I couldn't lunch today, and I was a bit dizzy, but that's alright, I'll just head back home and-"

Then there was a slight, soft giggle he knew all too well, despite hearing it only once before. But it had left a lasting mark on his memory, and so Negi clenched his teeth, while Saber-san grew alert, her hand as if gesturing for something at her side. Emiya-san also looked in the direction the tiny, cute giggle had come from, down the deserted street, into the growing shadows of the dying day.

Then the ground beneath their feet seemed to shake ever so lightly, first once, then twice, as a gigantic shape lurching in the distance, slowly heading towards them, became visible, with a much smaller figure sitting atop it. Negi's blood froze in his veins.

"Shirou. Behind me," Saber-san curtly said, but Emiya was as paralyzed as Negi was at the time, although from perplexity rather than dread.

"I had been waiting for this moment, and it was about time!" the tiny, pale person sitting atop the muscular, shirtless giant with grayish skin and red eyes that almost seemed to glow said, loud and clear. "For my two brothers to be together, so I could introduce myself properly! Good evening, Shirou-kun and Negi-kun!"

She tilted ahead just a bit, perfect, tiny white teeth glinting or at least giving the illusion of it, her diminutive hands wrangled into the thick, messy black locks of her ride's long hair. Violet eyes feasting on the sights before her. Anticipating what there was to come.

"Your big sister's here," she said. "Your Illya-chan!"

* * *

Meanwhile, on the same world, believe it or not, in Akashi-sensei's living room, Kaname-san had interrupted her story before Fate would enter it in his unique polite door blowing style, since it didn't pertain the points she was trying to make, she wanted to reveal as little as possible about Fate, and, most of all, because she had to help revive the professor after he finally had enough and fainted next to Akira, with Minako faintly shaking her head to herself and commenting on the frailty of most men. However, miles and miles away, the Joker was far less concerned about his far more hardened audience, and thus his parallel narration kept on going.

* * *

Fate closed his eyes. "Do you truly want to know what I want, Princess Asuna?"

She decided to let that "princess" bit slide this once, given that she was in fact drawing on the authority of her position for this negotiation. "Lay it on me."

"I want to finish the job my creator gave me, to complete the rescue of Mundus Magicus, to find a way to overcome my creator without destroying myself in the process. And then, once that's done, I want to place myself and Negi-kun in suspended animation for about a million years or so, so that we can emerge in a solar system long since cleared off of the intelligent life which exists here now, so that there are no more distractions... and just be with him for the rest of eternity.

"Not in the sexual manner that the rest of you are so quick to embrace," he added hastily. "While I can engage in that mode, it is not the way my inclination lies. But just to be with him, to talk of things that matter, to strive against each other when we choose... endlessly, through the aeons to come."

Asuna looked at him.

"A foolish dream," Fate admitted. "Impossible, now that he has shed his undying immortality. And probably impossible regardless. But it is my dream, nonetheless."

"You don't think you're going to survive the battle with the Life-Maker, do you?" she asked.

"I see myself dissolving into nothingness with his defeat," he answered. "This is the fate I expect for all of his creations... with the exception, of course, of your inimitable self."

"If I'm inimitable, how come he tried to imitate me so many times?" Asuna asked.

"Madness. What else is there to say?"

* * *

At this point, Ruri looked at Quartum. "Shouldn't you be complaining again about how everything in this conversation should be an impossibility?"

"No," he replied. "I'm well aware I'm the superior unit, and now that I have reflected on the subject, I'm not going to deny there's a chance any of the others might fall to those ridiculous emotions after enough exposure to them. Besides, Tertium should be right at assessing his zero chances of survival against our creator. I only have the vaguest memories of him, but I know he is pretty much a physical god."

"I think your brother's quite a romantic!" Tsukuyomi piped in. "Ah, to live through the end of all life with your beloved! I can't fathom why he'd want to sleep through it instead of watching, though."

Joker shrugged. "Some people have weird tastes like that, Yomi."

Harley sat, arms folded, pout bitter. "He's a jerk! All he cares about is what he wants! Nowhere in his dream he thinks about what the other guy wants! He doesn't stop to think that Negi guy wouldn't want to spend eternity with him alone, but with everyone he cares about!"

Joker nodded. "Exactly! Because love is all about putting your better half's needs and desires before your own!"

"That's right!" Harley cooed, giving him a tight hug while he groaned and rolled his eyes, pushing her back aside with an elbow, only to find out he wasn't moving her an inch. "Oh, Mistah J, I'm so glad you care, even when everyone says you never would!" This was said with an intent gaze back at Ivy.

"... him understanding it doesn't mean he's feeling it, Harley," Ivy shot back. "You really think he cares about your needs and desires? **Really?** "

"Hey!" Joker protested. "I care about nothing but the needs and desires of the better half in our relationship!"

Everyone but Harley, who just kept on cuddling against his chest, stared at him.

"... and you're the better half in that relationship, aren't you?" Tsukuyomi accused.

"The lady said it, not me!" Joker announced loudly, and while Harley raised her eyebrows, unsure of how to take that, he continued his twisted tale.

* * *

The man was truly gigantic, a mass of grotesque muscle wielding a mass that seemed to be easily twice as big as Illya herself. Negi guessed that had to be her Servant, although he did not look at all like the Dark Knight Kuro had spoken about while mentioning her 'sister's' Servant. Still, he definitely gave a matching sense of threat and undiluted power, and Negi could not blame Emiya-san for freezing in place where he stood, one of his hands tightly wrapped around one of Saber's wrists.

The woman simply stood defiantly, in an expert stance and as if holding some manner of invisible or imaginary weapon between her hands. With a mere shrug, she had allowed the long coat drop off herself, revealing a long regal blue dress with armored plates all over it, plus heavy, thick gloves of matching armor. It hardly looked like the most comfortable outfit to fight in, Negi dimly realized before his full attention returned to Illyasviel, who had shifted around so she sat cross legged on a shoulder of the giant.

"Illya-san," the younger boy said. "Why are you here? It can't be to hurt me, since otherwise you'd have done it the first time we met..."

"Do you know her?" Saber coolly asked him, her eyes still fixed on the titan who fumed at her like a mad bull waiting to be released.

Negi had to nod slowly. "Not too much, but yes... We have crossed paths once before. But-"

"That's not all, I also happened to meet your little girlfriend back at London," Illya mischievously said, eyes narrowing and smirk growing. "Spirited young lady, I actually liked her a lot! Better make sure she won't ever become your grieving widow!"

"Anya?" Negi gasped, his hand reaching for his staff without even fully realizing it. "You... You didn't do anything to Anya, did you?"

"I said I liked her, didn't I?" the tiny albino asked back, smirk dissolving. "As for you, I won't make such promises just yet. First I have to see if you're indeed a worthy brother of mine. I can tell, however, someone else isn't."

Her gaze drifted towards Shirou, who was coming back to himself enough as to now try and pull Saber back with himself, and completely fail at doing so. "Although," the small girl added, "I wasn't expecting for him to be able to summon a Servant himself, and of the Saber class, no less. I see Father might have been able to teach him something after all. Well," she said, leaping down to land on her booted feet on the sidewalk, then pulling the edges of the skirt up a bit, enough as to properly accompany her subtle bowing in a cutesy curtsy, "now we'll see exactly how much! Berserker! Kill that ugly Servant!"

Then there was a roar, not unlike that of a huge beast from long gone eras, something that might have haunted the nightmares of the first men and women in a young world, something that chilled Negi and Shirou to their very cores. And then, in a blink, before either of them could truly react past the primal dread that roar ellicted from them, the massive titan was charging at them with incredible speed, so fast as a matter of fact only one of them could react to it. That was Saber, who similarly charged ahead, leaving Emiya's hand suddenly holding nothing but air, and ducking under the first mace swing of the colossus, striking with her invisible or imaginary (Negi dearly hoped for the former) blade at the muscular midsection of the Berserker.

And Negi could literally feel the shockwaves of the clash making the ground rattle under his feet. He hadn't seen such display of power since Kyoto; even the mountain of a man known only as Walter who had fought Kotaro recently seemed to be nothing compared to the raw aura of power literally emanating from this behemoth, who didn't even flinch at the obviously also very powerful direct attack Saber had directed at his granitic body.

Instead of expressing any pain or being set back at all, the Berserker simply swatted Saber aside like a fly, sending her crashing against a wall.

"SABER!" Shirou cried, trying to rush for her, before Negi, still mostly reacting instinctively, held him from behind, pulling him back before the taller young man could advance.

Negi steeled himself, breathing as deeply as he could. For all he knew, he would be very outmatched here, in this conflict between legendary heroes whose recognition dwarfed even that of his father. Still, he couldn't just stand back and simply let it happen as he did nothing but watching.

 _"Ras Tel Ma Scir Magister..."_ he began to softly chant under his breath...

* * *

"'I do not want your pity,'" said the Joker as Fate, a touch of his old hauteur returning. Fate's, not the Joker's. The Joker's had never gone away in the first place.

"'Good, 'cause I'm not offering it to you,'" the Joker then added, in a frighteningly accurate imitation of a young girl's voice. "'You can reasonably expect to have years to spend with Negi before he's ready to confront the Life-Maker, where I was operating under the idea that I had months with everybody I care about. Even if we had worked something out, that something would not involve you getting to monopolize Negi's time. I get that your feelings are unique to you, but everybody else's feelings are unique to them, and if you have any of my pity, you have it for not getting that. My advice would be to work on getting it.'"

"'... very well,'" Joker replied to himself. "'I will essay... to "get it".'" After a short pause, he added in his own voice, "Just what he thought of this latest task was readily apparent on his face."

"You're far more bearable when you aren't being yourself," Ruri observed.

Joker chose to regally ignore that. "'Well, at least you deserve some credit for not threatening to blackmail us in order to get your way.'"

"'A pointless act, given that the authority to which I would threaten to expose your illicit activities is choosing to ignore my own, already known ones, as well as those of the rest of the faculty,'" Joker said that Fate said, now sounding oddly weary.

"'Good point," Joker answered. "'And I guess you also deserve credit for not rejecting the notion on the grounds that if the Headmaster found out that he was fooling around with Konok-'"

"Konoka-Ojousama? For real?" Tsukuyomi interrupted, her amused expression melting into a thoughtful grimace that did not forebode well. "Now, I will say this for her, she might have a lot of ugly and disgusting flaws, but I can tell she's one of us and she's always been!"

"One of us?" Quartum asked.

"A lesbian," Temptress explained. "And I wouldn't be so sure anyway."

"Che, what can you know about the subject, anyway?" Tsukuyomi scoffed at her, while Joker pondered, once again, just driving the car off the road and into a cliff, but once again concluding he most likely could not jump out in time before Quartum pulled him back. Bummer.

"Oh, I'm just the goddess of sensual love, remember?" Temptress mused whimsically, folding her arms behind her neck and assuming a pixieish knowing expression. Tsukuyomi's attention, somehow, suddenly focused on the Servant's white smooth armpits, and she found herself wishing she could slice a thin layer of that soft creamy flesh off and taste it. The thought made her blush adorably, unable to rise to Temptress's point. "I know that Ojousama type. They're almost always insatiable. Ever ready to try new things and quickly growing bored of the old ones they cherished before."

Joker cleared his throat, as ever eager to regain the spotlight. "Yeah, yeah, that's right, Hon! And since this Twilight Princess also was, in her own way, an Ojouwhatever as well, she giggled sluttily and told the little Quarty of Rock, 'You know, despite what I said before, I have to admit that you do have a certain enigmatic appeal, Fate-kun,' leaning back on the couch where she'd been sitting all this while. 'Maybe we could settle this-'"

"'You're not my type,' he said, and turned to leave?" Quartum guessed.

Joker frowned. "Why, you little smelly Smartypants! Who's telling the story, you or me?"

"Oh! Oh! Quartum-kun got it right! Congratulations, Quartum-kun!" Tsukuyomi cheered. "Maybe you should take over from here on? Uncle's story has been sort of boring so far..."

"For a story told by Joker, there's been a noticeable absence of blood, murder, explosions, lame puns or Batman so far," Ivy agreed. A beat. "Joker. You'd better not do it," she warned coldly.

The Clown Prince hissed viciously, then began to steer the car back into track. "Bah! It wasn't a high enough cliff anyway!"

* * *

Meanwhile, at the actual other world where that allegedly tame story was taking place, two young girls and a cabbit listened in silence behind a door.

Sasami, Princess of the Holy Galactic Empire of Jurai, was hardly unused to witnessing and even owning amazing pieces of incredible scientific craft, but most of them were made of wood. Wood carved from sacred, nearly omnipotent and immortal trees, perhaps, but... wood. So she still was fairly impressed by every piece of fantastic METAL! based technology the other youngest inhabitant of the house employed. Well, as a matter of fact, Tenchi and Keiichi were the two youngest inhabitants, since both of the little girls were several hundred Earth years old, but... same difference.

What we're trying to say here is, Sasami was in awe of the device Skuld was holding, and which allowed them to listen through the door at what the adults (and Tenchi) of the house were discussing with the two visiting teachers from Mahora.

"... so that's why you weren't present at the time, then," Takashiro-sensei pondered quietly, looking at how Tenchi laughed awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck with a hand.

"Yeah," Ryoko said, sipping from her cup of sake. "Who ever thought we'd have to someday thank Mara and Dr. Clay, huh? If they hadn't teamed up with that harebrained scheme and forced us to chase them off planet all through last week-"

"- Tenchi-sama might have fallen victim to that insidious presence sweeping the school grounds!" Ayeka Jurai finished the sentence, much to Ryoko's annoyance, taking a hand to her own mouth in a very princess-like fashion. "Oh dear! That would have been terrible!"

"I suspect circumstances will keep on conspiring to preserve the virginities of Tenchi-dono and Keiichi-dono as long as possible," an amused Washu commented in her best faux sage tone. "I am starting to theorize such is the will of the Universe itself."

While Keiichi flinched uncomfortably at that stinging suggestion, Belldandy merely looked aside for a moment, as if distracted by something that might not have anything to do with the subject at hand.

Urd frowned at Washu, who just chuckled at her, before telling Takashiro and Takahata, "Well, yeah, that's our story and now you know it too. So, about that Kitami woman..."

"Twelve years ago, she struck a pact with a demon overlord, that much I know," the redhaired Arts teacher said, "Since, as I recall, Urd-sama has blood connections to that lineage, I was hoping you might enlighten us on exactly what devil that was, and how would that relate to Kitami's... current situation."

The dark skinned goddess hummed, tapping her fingers on the table as she regarded Takashiro curiously. She wanted to ask her how exactly she'd learned that much about her, but decided she'd do that later, as proceeding now would only complicate things further. Damn paranormal researchers.

She only reacted when Ryoko passed her another cup of sake. Thanking her usual drinking buddy with a nod, Urd picked the liquor up, took a first sip, then told Hiroko, "That sounds like my Mother's line of work, actually. Someone like Satanus or Mephisto would have gone for a pact that resulted in immediate destruction, Neron habitually sticks to charging idiotc criminals with superpowers to mess with costumed clowns, and Malebolgia... well, Malebolgia is all about putting generals-to-be in stupid symbiotic costumes. No wonder Mom could take the top spot instead of those bozos."

"I thought Mephistopheles-san had changed his line of work to taking marriages, neesan?" Belldandy asked her.

Urd shook her head while drinking again. "It didn't take him long to realize that was too dumb a procedure, even for him. Anyway, yeah, Mom favors deals with attractive younger women. I suspect her falling out with Father... well, sort of soured her on men, if you get my drift."

"Seriously? She coulda fooled me, what with the way she clung to Keiichi when she first met him," Ryoko piped in, terribly amused. Belldandy said nothing, and her saintly expression betrayed no changes, but a strand of her hair visibly stiffened in a vaguely threatening manner that made Keiichi very uncomfortable.

While Skuld's face reddened, Sasami whined in a low voice and tried to yank the listening device from her for another turn. "What are they saying now, Skuld-chan? What? Let me hear too, please..."

"Wh-When you are older!" Skuld hissed, pushing the blue haired princess back rather roughly.

"Mya, mya mya mya. Mya," Ryo-Ohki opined.

"I make no promises, but I'll try learning what went on there," Urd was saying while standing up, slowly heading towards a certain door at the other end of the room. "But before we continue, please let me take care of something else first..."

A second later, Skuld and Sasami were unceremoniously thrown on onto the Masaki shrine's front yard, and then Ryo-Ohki was flung to softly land on top of Sasami's head. Then, while Skuld flinched and groaned in pain, Urd slammed the front door on them and was heard stomping her way back inside, Ryoko's laughter clearly audible from the inside as well.

"Myaaaaaaa," Ryo-Ohki lamented.

"I don't know why I keep letting you tag along with me," Skuld muttered rather bitterly. "I should've surrounded myself with more fitting associates... maybe that Lingshen-san I've heard so much about? I heard it's going well for Variant 6228161 so far."

* * *

Skuld rubbed her nose, blushing slightly while sniffling a stray tiny glob of mucus that had peeked out during her sneeze, then resumed a much more mature stance. She was with Chao and Satsuki at the living quarters both human girls shared, addressing the cataclysmic- for them at least- events of the day.

Satsuki simply sat back in silence, taking notes on the debate as Chao had instructed her to through the duration of her project. And Satsuki, reliable and patient as ever, would obey her to the letter, literally in this case. She supposed Chao might have done better by simply making recordings of her conversations with Skuld, but then again, she had made Satsuki take dictation in a previously agreed code, so it stood to reason Chao and Skuld simply didn't want to chance their discussions ever falling into others' hands.

"Never mind then, I'll take care of my stupid sister," Skuld muttered, her maturity having lasted almost a full minute, too. Then again, Urd always had that effect on her. "Don't you worry about her. However... are you sure we can trust Kuga on this?"

Chao nodded. "She'll play her hand, trust me. What about Asakura? Do you think we should involve her this time?"

"This time?" Satsuki finally broke her silence without lifting her gaze from the notes, with a quiet, calmed tone in what happened to be nothing but a casual question.

Skuld looked at her before telling her, "Well ... it's not the first time Chao-san has ever done something like this, but never without my participation. Which is why she'd never succeeded at it before."

"That was funny!" Chao smiled pleasantly, before growing more serious again. "Forgive me for being somewhat secretive on this, Satchan, but... revealing the existence of magic to the world has been a longtime goal of mine. There's a good reason for it, trust me."

"Of course," Satsuki nodded placidly, her unbreakable tone still the same. "I was only a bit curious, that's all."

Skuld pondered the enigmatic cook before dismissing her away as ultimately inconsequential in the big scheme, anyway. "As for Asakura, yeah, why not? Of course, we know she'll try to backstab us eventually, but you know what you say about keeping your friends close and your-"

Softly, Satsuki chided, with a head still low but a gentle yet firm shake of her pen, "Now, now, Skuld-san, Asakura-san is not our enemy, no matter what her differences with you might be, and I don't think you should talk about her that way."

Despite herself, Skuld shuddered, because since her days growing up under Belldandys' care she'd always been vulnerable to that sort of reproach delivery. "I... apologize," she carefully said while Chao raised an eyebrow in mild fascination. "I'm, of course, talking in purely strategic terms, not intended to carry on any personal connotations..."

"I thought so. Just wanted to make sure. Sorry," Satsuki said, still without looking into Skuld's eyes, for otherwise the Norn would have been truly lost.

Skuld shuddered again and then addressed Chao again, struggling to regain her composure. "And what about Langley?"

Chao gave her a thumbs up. "Despite everything, she still can conduct herself like a professional. She was... well, as rattled at first as you'd expect her to, but by now she's all behind us on it. She sees it as a challenge, can you believe it?"

"Good," Skuld nodded dryly. Yes, you can do that.

And of course Langley would think of it as a challenge. That always was Langley's way. She would eventually become unstable enough as to be nothing but a liability, but that would surely happen only long after the time window required for the plan's success was over. As long as she kept herself focused in the interim, she might be a valuable asset indeed. Especially since, in this iteration, the gap between her and her mother could be exploited to turn her against the status quo her mother embodied, and-

"My my my," Satsuki distantly mused aloud. "That's quite a web of conspirators you have spun here, isn't it? Not that I mean to offend with that, naturally."

"It can't be helped, Satchan, any project of this caliber demands for a wide infrastructure and support platform," Chao smiled while crossing her legs on the living room's couch.

"Even so," Satsuki cautioned slowly, "you are well aware, as the old wisdom goes, the more people there is on a secret, the sooner it will blow up, aren't you?"

"Oh, we're counting on that," Chao easily replied. "As a matter of fact, this is all about exposing full secrets to the light, ne?"

Satsuki thought about also reminded them of the other piece of old wisdom that said Light was not always Nice, but ultimately decided against doing so.

She still trusted Chao, after all.

* * *

 _Still in the same world:_

"I'm just saying it's very suspicious the story so far is so tame, by your standards," Ivy insisted as they now sat on the sidewalk by the seemingly neverending road, the car parked aside and the fast food stand burning behind them, while Quartum stood with his back to them, hands on his hips, cackling madly while overseeing his precious flames. "Even if we were humoring you and assuming that's something that really happened elsewhere, or will happen, it doesn't matter, it's unlike you not to... embellish it."

Joker frowned, gulped the latest mouthful of his hot dog down, then gestured toward Ivy with what remained of his weiner, which is a sentence that has never been used in a non sexual fashion in a lemon before. "I ask you, what do you know about comedy? Not even the first thing about setting the punchline up, right? Listen, for a joke to work, first there must be a seemingly serious and straight line of-"

"Ohhhh my Gooddd, it burns, it burnssss!" screamed a young man in shredded clothes as he ran out of the stand waving his arms, turned into a literal human torch of complete despair, agonizing pain, and an overwhelming smell of cooking flesh.

"Huh, we missed one, who'd have thought it?" Tsukuyomi tilted her head aside, adjusting her glasses while looking back at the dying man. "Must've hid himself in the bathroom."

"Well, then you should've looked into the bathroom!" Harley accused her.

Tsukuyomi took a hand to her cheek and cooed, "Eeeee! But peeking into the boys' bathroom would've been unbefitting a good little girl like myself!"

"Please help me please for the love of Heaveeeeeeeen!" the man yelled while running in circles, trying to slap the flames off of him in irrational panic.

"You monsters," Ruri murmured, keeping her gaze away from the vicious scene. "Temptress, couldn't you at least help him somewhat?"

The tiny Servant blinked out of the fascinated stupor she'd been through the latest few minutes, as she had been silently gazing into the distance, towards their still unseen ultimate destination, as if something was calling to her there with a renewed pull. "Huh?" She then looked at the burning man, up and down, before telling Ruri, "I'm sorry, Master, but my powers don't include healing. I once knew someone who... well, she might've made for a good enough Caster, and she was very competent at that sort of thing, but me? Nope"

"Then at least please put him out of his misery quick and painlessly," Ruri interrupted, covering her own ears with her hands and closing her eyes as tightly as she could.

"I'm afraid I'm not that good a killer either. Unless you give me a knife and a Casanova enemy of all women," Temptress confessed before asking Tsukuyomi, "Shouldn't you be doing that instead?"

"My clothes might catch on fire!" Tsukuyomi pointed out, gesturing down at the cute pink frilly dress she was wearing. "Why not Joker-han? Indiscriminate murder is his thing!"

Joker apathetically looked at the man who now rolled across the dirt by the roadside, trying to end his suffering. "Eh. It's not funny when it's to prevent them from suffering."

"Oh, for the love of-" Ivy sneered, getting up, readying a small crossbow, walking up to the man, and shooting him in the head. "There, everyone should have at least a few standards. Honestly, can we leave now? The police should be arriving anytime now!"

"I don't think so," Tsukuyomi shrugged. "This has never been a very violent country, so the cops are wussies, and ever since the cataclysm, security at the highways became veeeeery lax and lazy. Or that's what my elders have taught me anyway. It's been that way as long as I've been alive, I can tell you that much."

"Idiots," Ruri bitterly mumbled, mostly because she couldn't let a single chapter pass by without saying it at least once. The real epithet she was thinking of at the time was far harsher, however.

"Anyway," Joker continued, "I think you'll like the next bit. In it, a small cute animal gets squished by this Asuna girl."

"Oh," Tsukuyomi said, "I'm relieved to know there's hope for her yet, then!"

Temptress simply kept on looking into the distance. The Joker's tale was of no interest to her one way or another.

She had been there herself, and she had not liked the punchline the first time around, either.

* * *

 **To be Continued**.


	3. Chapter 3

Flat on her back on a Queen's bed, while being orally pleased by said Queen herself ... said Queen being a woman of great beauty and feared influence. This was something Asakura Kazumi had never imagined, not even in her wildest dreams. True, the bed wasn't technically the Queen's, just one the Mahora faculty had lent her for the duration of her stay on the Academy grounds, but so what? It still was a much bigger and more luxurious bed than any other Asakura had ever been on before.

And for a woman who obviously was well used to being served, Daenerys-sama sure knew how to service as well. The way her tongue and right hand moved all over Kazumi's vulva and clitoris, while her left hand massaged the redhead's bare buttocks so expert and skillfully, just couldn't compare even to Sayo's most enthusiastic efforts.

And yet...

* * *

Asakura Kazumi snapped out of it as she heard Chachamaru's voice softly calling to her a second time. "Asakura-san, I repeat, are you feeling okay?" the gynoid said, obviously concerned, standing on the boat between the crouched forms of Kazumi and Kuga Natsuki, her subtly glowing green eyes briefly shifting from the abandoned research center at the rocky coastline before them to focus instead on her red haired classmate. "If you aren't feeling up to the task tonight, maybe you should -"

"No. Nah, I'm okay. It's just I couldn't sleep that well last night, but I'll make up for it tomorrow," Asakura promised, rubbing the space between her eyes with a hand. "I wouldn't miss this for anything in the world." And she flashed a smirk at the serious black haired girl at Chachamaru's other side. "You, Sempai?"

"I was born for this," Natsuki grimly said. "I assume you're done already, Karakuri?"

Chachamaru nodded. "Affirmative. I have been able to deactivate the perimeter alarms and pinpoint every guard inside of the complex. Security is laxer than Chao-san expected. Two guards on each wing. I suggest infiltrating through the East wing. The vital signs on one of the guards at that post indicate a much older person, probably asleep at this moment."

Natsuki nodded as well, not bothering to look up at the green haired girl. "I can work with that. I'll take care of the rest. Last chance to call it quits, Asakura-san."

Asakura clenched her grin further. "If you're in, so am I, Sempai. Just show the way."

Without a single word more, the black bikini-clad Natsuki simply jumped into the quiet waters of the bay, breaking through the reflection of the full moon above. A moment later, Asakura gave Chachamaru a thumbs up and dove in right after Kuga, herself wearing nothing but a green bikini top, Daisy Duke shorts, and the utility belt Chao had given her this evening.

"Good luck, Kuga-san, Asakura-san," Chachamaru quietly said, keeping her scanners on the two curvaceous figures swimming under the surface and away from her.

* * *

"Oh God!" Asakura cried, her back arching, her hands clawing on the white mattress, her eyes tightening closed. "Oh God! Oh God, oh God, oh God! Sayoooooooooo!"

And then her mind was blown while her naked body rattled one last time for the night, her legs squeezing Daenery's head between her thighs, and after what seemed an eternity, a sweet long sigh of relief left Kazumi's lips.

Slowly, silently, the Khaleesi rose from between Kazumi's legs, calculatedly licking the slick wetness left on her fingers. "Where is your other paramour now?" she finally asked, since she had been waiting more than enough for it by now.

Kazumi grunted while blocking her own eyes with a forearm. "She isn't 'my other', Your Majesty. She is the only one for me."

"And yet, she isn't here now," the other nude young woman said, shifting up as to sit by Asakura's side. "Enough as to make you come back to me, even after you rejected my initial offers. Why was that?"

Kazumi sighed. "She's just trying to cope with it, you know. Making up for all the lost time with... well, him. I can't stop her from doing so. It wouldn't be fair. He was part of her life too, long before me."

"Back when she still had a life for him to be a part of," the blonde mused, reaching over to gently caress one of Asakura's nipples, admiring her beauty. The younger woman merely flinched in a mixture of pleasure and discomfort. "You know my feelings on the subject, Kazumi. The dead don't belong with the living. Sooner or later you will have to let her go, just like I did with my husband."

"Please. I don't want to talk about that. Ours is... a different case."

"Quite," she said, as the fingers went on to lightly tug on the nipple's tip, over and over. "Even so, a ghost of the past is still a thing that belongs to-"

"Sayo is not a 'thing'!" Asakura roared then, sitting up straight in a single movement, and reaching over to pull bedsheets against her front.

The Queen did not falter as she kept on kneeling before the angered young Earthling. "Perhaps I have phrased myself wrongly," she admitted. "Although it could be argued we are all things, one way or another. I don't mean your beloved is in any way our lesser, but she is still different and belongs elsewhere."

"With all due respect, Your Majesty," she pointed out, "some would say the same about those from Mundus Magicus. I don't agree with them, of course, but..."

She smiled and caressed Asakura's cheek now. "And I thank you for that. Because I have come to greatly appreciate your company."

And she leaned ahead to kiss Asakura's mouth again.

Asakura herself had more protests to voice on that whole matter, but decided she always could express them later.

* * *

As they pulled themselves up from the water, Asakura just silently thanked whatever gods might be listening that the coldness of the water could excuse how hard her nipples were right now, in the event Kuga-sempai happened to notice the way they peaked under the wet top. Not that she would ask anyway.

And Kazumi also made a point of looking at her surroundings, not at Kuga-sempai's finely toned backside as she led her closer to the old building.

For some reason she was feeling really weird that evening. But damn it, she didn't like girls! Really, she didn't! There had to be a perfectly logical explanation for her odd confusion! Yeah, that was it, and whatever it was, she was sure she'd wake up perfectly fine next morning, her mind all refreshed after a long good sleep, and her mind wouldn't be full with weird absurd vague ideas anymore...

* * *

 **Further Side Conquests of an Accidental Stud Monkey**.

 **Chapter Two**.

 **Servants to our Desires**.

* * *

Based on an original story by Darkenning from characters created by Kodansha, Akamatsu Ken, and too many others to list.

Proofreading, editing, story input and trained animals supplied by Darkenning.

George R. R. Martin and Emilia Clarke should not be contacted over the contents of this story. And neither should your mother. What would she say if she learned you were reading this smut?

 **Disclaimer:** For the full story on what happened during the confrontation Negi, Saber and Shirou had with Illya and Berserker, wait for _Magic is what you want it to be_ to get there. What, you weren't expecting for all major plot points to be fleshed out in a side story tying into another fanfic, were you? Besides, then we'd be spending too long at the Unequally world and we'd never have any time to devote to what's going on at the Side Conquests universe...

* * *

It was all coming back to Emiya Shirou now.

First, he had a very strange dream of living under the same roof as Saber, the Tohsaka sisters, and some mysterious beautiful woman with long purplish hair and glasses. It was some sort of wet dream, the kind Shirou admittedly had experienced regarding the Tohsaka sisters before, but he was mildly surprised to see Saber there. So far, she puzzled him enough as to make him slightly uncomfortable in her presence, like she wanted to keep him at arm's length and had problems being a woman instead of a fighting machine. And of course, he had no idea who the other woman was supposed to be, although the Dream Sakura kept on calling her, between wet and torrid kisses, something that sounded like Rid-

Anyway, then the actual memories of what had happened after Negi-sensei chanted his activation spell began flowing back, replacing those.

And Shirou woke up, startled.

"Please stay down, Sempai," a girl she recognized as the Headmaster's granddaughter, from all of those times he and his father had visited the old man, was telling him now, gently keeping a hand on his chest before he could bolt upright. Shirou obeyed, and found himself looking up at a very familiar ceiling. His own bedroom's. Shifting his eyes around a bit, he sat Saber sitting by Konoe-san's side, looking somewhat stiffer and slightly more spent than usual. Shirou smiled at her, even though she didn't smile back. "You still need to rest," Konoe Konoka warmly told him. "Your wounds have healed now, but your body's still tired. You should go back to sleep."

"Saber," he hoarsely said, "I'm glad you're okay. And you too, Sensei," he added, now looking at Negi, who sat at Konoka's other side with his shirt off and a few bandages around an arm. Shirou dimly noticed the boy was slightly more muscular than he'd have thought, but then, that explained how he'd seen him move around Berserker before being left unconscious himself. "Oh! Is that girl, that Illya-san -"

"She's okay, she left without a single scratch on her, actually," mumbled a pockmarked girl with glasses and a ponytail who also sat by Negi, one Shirou didn't recognize at all. She looked like Konoka's age, though. "Said she was growing bored after her giant bloodied you, and then simply turned around and walked away. Seriously, what did you ever do to her?"

"Me?" Shirou asked back, as he realized Konoka's friend and roommate Asuna-san, who often would also be around during their visits to the Konoes, was there as well, standing guard by the door with a pale girl with black hair and a large sword and a short, thin girl with black braids and a very wide forehead. Now that he remembered, it looked like Negi-sensei had summoned them shortly before being slammed down, and only after a long of futile struggling and obvious inner conflict. Obvious even to someone like Shirou. "N-No, I don't even know who she is... She called me a 'brother', but ..."

He sat up slowly, depite Konoka's best attempt to keep him still, and rubbed his hideously aching head with a hand. "What in the world happened to me?"

"Berserker almost killed you, that's what happened," Negi replied. "Your wounds were so bad, it took almost all of Konoka-san's power to heal you back."

Konoka nodded. "I'd never needed to heal that much in a single go! I wasn't even left with enough juice to patch Negi-kun back up! Luckily his injuries weren't that bad..."

"I see. Thank you very much," Shirou exhaled. Of course she'd have magical powers. That was no surprise, considering her parentage. Kiritsugu had always spoken highly of the Konoes. "So no one was killed after all, right? Then everything's alright..."

"No, of course it's not 'alright'!" protested the ponytailed girl. "You don't know what you've just gotten into, do you?!"

"I must agree with her, Shirou," Saber stoically said. "Even after being told of the Grail War, and after listening to the priest's words, you don't seem to be taking this as seriously as you should. Your behavior on the battleground was hardly befitting a Master."

"Actually, that goes for you as well!" the ponytailed girl snapped. "Look, great warrior of the past, future or alternate world or not, I doubt you have any actual idea of what's going on with this whole Grail business!"

"Oh?" Saber coldly regarded her. "Would you happen to be a Master as well?"

"Me? Perish the thought!" the girl recoiled.

"Chisame, please, this isn't the way to explain it," Negi wearily said. "Emiya-san, Saber-san, I think you're already familiar with Konoka-san and Asuna-san. These are my roommates and students Hasegawa Chisame-san and Hakase Satomi-san, and Konoka-san's... best friend Sakurazaki Setsuna-san."

"I am naught but a loyal servant of Konoka Ojou-sama's house," Setsuna humbly added from her post, bowing to Shirou while Asuna and Konoka briefly shared a rolling of eyes. "I have heard much about your father, Emiya-sempai."

Shirou noded vaguely in her direction, declining to ask on whether she'd heard good or bad things. He had a feeling he wouldn't like the answer. "Pleased to meet you all, and sorry to have brought you into this. But, if we could know exactly what's-"

"That Grail thing is cursed!" Chisame blurted out, and Saber's eyes subtly widened for a moment.

"We don't know that for sure just yet," Negi gently told her.

"Murphy's Law!" Chisame said. "When something can go wrong, it'll go wrong! And it went wrong in Kuro-san's world!"

"That's... a very pessimistic outlook on things," her teacher tried to reason.

"He was nearly pulped to death by a murderous brute strung along by a creepy little girl!" Chisame argued, pointing vigorously at Shirou. "Do you think that's what would happen in a War where everything was going on just fine?!"

"If everything were going well and in a civilized fashion, would there be a War in the first place, Chisame?" the girl named Satomi argued in response.

Shirou nodded. "Yeah, well. The way I see it, too, any Artifact people kill each other for is already cursed, in its own way. But you'll have to explain further..."

Konoka sighed and stood up. "I'll go brew up some tea. I feel we'll be here for a while."

"Going with you," Asuna offered. "Man, I can't wait to see Misa's face when we tell her about this!"

* * *

 **Honnouji Academy, Earth 6228161:**

"It's time," the voice coming from behind Kitami Reika said.

The short haired blonde in the open lab coat over the tight black minidress shuddered despite herself, but did not look back. "I thought I had felt a chill coming into the office," she simply mused, closing the book she had been reading, reaching for the ashtray on the desk before her, and putting her cigarette out on it. "I know. Time to see the old stomping grounds again. Don't worry, I... persuaded the Principal to appoint me their field guide, seeing as how I was a student there, and Kiryuin doesn't suspect anything. Everything is going as planned."

"I'm aware of that," the confident female voice said, the lights of the small office slowly going down around them. "But there's something else you should know."

"Then please enlighten me, Hild-sama," Kitami said, lighting another cigarette up and thoughtfully puffing on it.

"As you've been told, we exist in multiple planes of reality at once," the owner of Kitami's soul said. "And across those planes, events often tend to repeat themselves. Rather recently, a different aspect of me has finally claimed the soul of one who was just like you."

"I guess I'll have to be better than her, then," Kitami scowled, still only looking ahead. "Or is this meant to taunt me? To tell me that, just like her, I'm doomed to fail?"

"Not exactly," Hild conceded. "Think of it as the alternate endings for a computer game. Sometimes, you perish pathetically, and your soul plummets into the fiery pit. Sometimes, you succeed, and you bring forth a new dark age for us after usurping another young body. What is funny about this special case is, I have decided to do something to her I've never done before. I am offering her a chance for redemption."

Kitami almost flinched, but remained quiet. "And that is so you can torment me with the knowledge she has been chosen for that while I haven't? Hild-sama, I am beyond wishing for redemption anymore."

"Well, that is one of the reasons. However, my main motive is to simply perform an experiment. To see what it takes to redeem a soul as yours, to prevent it from ever happening against my will."

"I see," Kitami calmly said. "And you wish for my assistance with this... experiment of yours."

"In a way, yes," the Queen of Hell chuckled, grabbing Kitami's chair and spinning it around, so they had to be staring into each other's eyes now, enjoying the harsh defiance on the human's evil glare. For all of that defiance, however, she still belonged to her in body and soul. "And Mahora will be your laboratory, all yours to play with."

"To play the game of long stalled revenge?" Kitami challenged, or at least pretended to.

The dark skinned, platinum-haired temptress before her nodded while shrugging her shoulders so the slinky red dress slipped down her perfect body. "Get them for me, Reika-chan. Twicefold, even. And prove your wickedness to be superior to your lost innocence."

"It is, and then some," Kitami growled huskily, a cruel smirk forming along her perfect mouth.

And they started kissing with the madness of the damned.

* * *

Elsewhere, across the borders that never should be crossed, the young Kitami Reika woke up covered in cold sweat and filled with confusion. A confusion that only grew when she realized the current position of her right hand. With a yelp, she quickly pulled it out of her panties, then lifted it, just enough as to see the glistening thin liquid layer spread across her fingers, remarkable against the moonlight entering through her window.

Kitami Reika, an innocent, virginal soul, somehow felt like screaming.

So she did.

* * *

 _Earth 10534103:_

While Nodoka headed down the hall wearing nothing but a wrapped bedsheet and unhappiness, Kuga Natsuki surprised her by peeking her head and bare shoulders out a nearby door, asking her, "Oh... Miyazaki-san, right? That commotion that sounded like a blown door, was that-"

Nodoka stopped, blinked through her bangs, and instead of answering, asked in turn, "Kuga-sempai? What are you doing in Tokiha-san's room?"

"Natsukiiiiiii," the voice of President Fujino came from within the room as Natsuki flinched and blushed, "Come back here already, if we were needed we'd have been called..."

Natsuki coughed into a fist, her subtle change in posture allowing her to see the outline of a perky breast, then awkwardly told Nodoka, "Let's just say we're teaching Shizuru that, while she'll always be, ah, my closest and dearest... friend, I just couldn't ever forget the, ah, comraderie I also share with Mai, and-"

"No!" Minagi Mikoto's voice also rang from the inside. "Mai's chest is only mine, mine mine to play with!"

"Natsukiiiiiiii!" Fujino's voice repeated, higher in pitch now. "Do you see what I mean? Mikoto-chan won't let me play with Mai-san, I need you back here!"

"Ahem, as you can see, that's working just fine, but Minagi's education, on the other hand..."

Nodoka nodded. "Oh, I know. As a matter of fact, I've just been with someone who is just like that."

"Natsukiiiiiiiiiiiii!" Fujino's voice called out again. "If you want to keep that conversation, you can do it here, you know! I promise I won't mind if Miyazaki-san joins us!"

"..." Natsuki said, head drooping and suddenly being framed in shadows.

But Nodoka only smiled, amused, and let the bedsheet drop around her ankles. "It's okay, Sempai," she warmly told Natsuki, "it's just in bad form to reject an invitation from our Student Council President, isn't it?"

Natsuki looked down at the sheet spread across the floor. "Are you just going to leave that thing th-"

"Yes," Nodoka said, gently pushing her inside, stepping in, and closing the door behind herself.

Yue wasn't expecting to have her back yet anyway.

* * *

 _Earth 6228161:_

Kuga Natsuki briefly stopped, her flesh gaining strange goosebumps for the briefest moment.

 _"Something wrong?"_ whispered Asakura, who still walked close behind her through the dark, tight corridor with bare walls that hadn't seen a fresh layer of paint for years, also coming to a halt.

After a second of pause, Natsuki shook her head and kept on walking. "Nothing. Just a... weird off feeling. That's it."

"Huh. You too?" Asakura wondered aloud.

"Quiet," Kuga reminded her, since even though Chachamaru was supposed to run interference on any hidden recording devices, they'd agreed to keep complete silence through the operation. Besides, what had briefly flashed through Natsuki's mind was something she didn't want to dwell on.

After successfully breaking into the seemingly abandoned complex, they had pulled on the night vision goggles Chao had placed in Asakura's utility belt, so they wouldn't have to carry hand lamps around. Chao seemed to think of everything, which was one of the main reasons why Asakura had thrown her lot in with her, when she approached her shortly after the trip to Kyoto. That, and she at least had shown more interest on her involvement with the world of magic than Negi-kun had.

Not that Asakura held any sort of grudge over him for that, but still, it was nice to see someone DID care, even if only because of their own reasons, instead of only pretending nothing had happened. Not even a single invitation to that club of theirs they had going on. That sort of stung, a tiny part of Asakura had to admit.

On the plus side now, by this point the fleeting temptation she had experienced while staring at the black bikini-clad behind leading her way currently seemed to have vanished altogether. Although, if Kuga's behavior was any indication, she had gotten rid of it by jinxing it on her instead. Unless the complex had some sort of chemical security system playing with their minds. But surely Chachamaru would have taken care of that too.

Natsuki abruptly stopped again, and Asakura first guessed she had just had another of those weird moments. But the black haired older girl simply gestured towards her to keep still, while the tiny communication device Chao had placed in the reporter's outside auditive channel briefed her as well, speaking with Chachamaru's voice, "The guard making the rounds just shifted his trajectory, sorry. I can't imagine why, but-"

"I can," Kuga grunted while her eyes darted towards the other end of the corridor the current crossroads would lead them into. There, a door marked 'Men's' waited, the light of a hand lamp falling on it. Kuga clenched her teeth and readied the tiny stun guns in each hand of hers.

A moment later, they could see the tall, burly man walking by right before them. For a moment, Asakura thought he'd just keep on walking without noticing them. After all, they stood in complete darkness, and he was aiming his lamp elsewhere. They had fallen into a perfect silence, even stopping breathing, as well. Still, soon it became obvious they had hired this guy not only because of his size.

All of a sudden, he shifted aside, hand reaching for the gun at his side, the other throwing his light on them. The added light on her goggles briefly blinded Asakura and made a short gasp escape her mouth, but Kuga simply closed her eyes, aimed unerringly, and shot.

A second later, while Asakura's vision still consisted of nothing but dancing dots, she heard Chachamaru saying, "Your presence hasn't been compromised yet to the rest of the staff. All the same, I suggest-"

"I know!" Kuga sneered, grabbing Asakura's hand and roughly pulling her along herself in an accelerated march further in. Kazumi almost stumbled on the body of the unconscious man splayed across the floor, but somehow kept herself on her feet while Kuga dragged her away. Which, she was realizing now, was even more exciting than brief flashes of sex with any beautiful woman.

That was a relief.

* * *

Elsewhere, another Kuga Natsuki was resting on her back on Tokiha Mai's bed. It had been awfully nice of Mai, Natsuki thought, to lend her bed like this, but Mai was that kind of person. Besides, she probably was just afraid the far more vigorous tribadism she was engaging in with Mikoto on the carpet, only a few steps away from her, would mess the bed up somewhat fierce.

As for Natsuki herself, she could only get brief glimpses of Mai and Minagi's union since most of her field of view was occupied by Shizuru's hindquarters, as the respectable President squatted on her face, moaning her name into Miyazaki's vulva over and over while Natsuki tried her best to satisfy her long time friend's (or should she start thinking of her as her girlfriend?) vagina with her mouth and fingers. It seemed to be working well enough, or else Shizuru was an even better actress than Natsuki knew. Then again, she worried, if she was getting all she could from the experience, why had she invited Miyazaki in for extra emotions and arrrrrrghhhh she was overthinking things again, ever after swearing she wouldn't!

To distract herself, Natsuki looked at Miyazaki's bare body, which further excited her, so maybe Shizuru had a valid point after all. For a library rat, the girl sure seemed athletic, as not many could stand on their hands licking and suckling on Natsuki's vagina while lifting her legs up, enough as to get them to lightly rest on Shizuru's shoulder while the Kyoto-borne president gave a mouth job to her femalehood and her hands massaged and fondled her small perky buttocks.

Natsuki only hoped her mother's soul, if it still was somewhere, would not look down on herself for engaging into these sorts of affairs. Then again, she wasn't even sure who her father was yet, so maybe Mother didn't have that much of a moral higher noooooo, she shouldn't be thinking of that either!

* * *

Another Kuga Natsuki, who did know who her father was but had found no greater spiritual relief over that fact, stood now in the middle of a small, old office, staring blankly at a desk she hadn't seen for years.

Asakura looked over Kuga's shoulders, and saw a small portrait on the desk, showing a woman with glasses and long black hair happily hugging an adorable girl against herself. Understanding immediately dawned on her. "Why," she softly mouthed out, "after all these years..."

"They didn't even care enough as to clean up," Kuga bitterly said. "After they took all her research away, they couldn't mind in the slightest about who she really was."

"Or maybe," Kazumi cautioned, "this is a trap set for you?"

"I doubt they care about me either," Natsuki replied, grabbing the portrait and handing it back to Asakura. "We're taking this with us," she ordered, only getting a vague node as an answer. Then her eyes caught onto something on the floor, and she crouched down to examine it. Kazumi saw it was the round plate for a dog, marked 'Duran' on Western letters, which made Natsuki flinch as she held it close to her chest.

"That, too?" Kazumi softly asked. "I won't mind -"

"No," Natsuki sighed, putting it back down. "I loved him a lot, but it never could be the same thing." Getting up, she took another long look at her surroundings and slapped her hands on her hips, as if to dust them off. "We're done here. Let's go."

"But, but we haven't even picked any important info yet."

"I imagine Karakuri already must have done that," Natsuki said. "Come on, if she could enter their files enough as to allow us physical access here, don't you think she could have accessed their databanks too?"

Kazumi gasped. "You mean... you mean all of this was just so you could get a-"

"It's something Lingshen owed me as payment for my services," Natsuki told her, "plus, a test for your abilities of infiltration and stealth."

"Ooooohhhh," Kazumi said. "And then? Have I passed?"

"I'll tell you," Natsuki firmly marched back for the nearly empty office's door, "as soon as we've left this damned place."

* * *

 _Earth 10534103:_

"So," Sister Shakti grimly asked, steeling herself the best she could, "are they sending Internal Affairs or not?"

"It seems they've taken pity on us and turning a blind eye," Sister Eda said while pulling a cigarette out and starting to puff on it, making sure to blow the smoke as close to Shakti's face as possible while still making a vague attempt at pretending it was not on purpose. It felt great being able to, for once, smoke in her presence without being chided. Otherwise, the American blonde would just remind her that she at least hadn't had sex with their underaged apprentices, giving herself over to the rather adult priests instead. "Because, you know, if they had to add this to the pile, so soon after what happened with Yukariko and Kirei, they'd have to close the church altogether, and then who'd keep an eye for them here?"

Shakti exhaled the briefest sigh of relief. "Thank goodness. Um, because, we were victims in all of this, of course. None of us were at fault at what happened then."

"Not even me?" Eda asked her with a smirk.

"... not even you," Shakti had to admit between clenched teeth, and the other woman laughed in a none too holy manner. They were together in Shakti's spartan office, with the windows open allowing them a view of Cocone and Misora doing clean up duty below, under the earliest morning sun. Eda kept on smoking thoughtfully while watching over the girls, which was starting to annoy Shakti more than she was willing to admit.

"Not that I'm not glad myself, mind," Eda finally conceded. "This time they were going to send Anderson on us."

"Anderson!" Shakti stiffened in terror, her voice a pitch higher than she had intended to. "You can't be serious!"

"Oh yes, I can," Eda nodded slowly. "Full cleanup duty, but again, then who else would be willing to stick to this place? Maybe that mutie freak from Germany."

"Don't speak ill of Father Wagner in my presence, ever again, Eda," Shakti sternly warned.

"Oh yeah. Sorry. I forgot you knew each other. I'll admit he's not a bad guy, but... look, I don't think you ever should fully trust muties, okay?" Eda glanced at her over her dark tinted glasses, the blue eyes for a moment betraying Eda's true jaded age with her gaze. "Having that much power, unearned power they just were born them, corrupts them sooner or later. Hell, I'm not saying it wouldn't happen to me, if-"

"One shouldn't judge everyone based on one's own self, Eda," Shakti cautioned, unamused.

Eda chuckled anyway. "Good to see you finally learned that lesson. So, what will you do now about Misochi? You can't just pretend nothing ever happened and move on."

When she didn't hear a reply, she simply stared accusingly at Shakti, with a frown. "That's right what you've been thinking of doing, right? For shame!"

"That's not funny, Eda, she-"

"No, now I'm not joking!" Eda barked. "I may be a lazy, morally corrupt, drunkass whore with a gambling problem who joined this crap only to score an easier job and have a haven from the CIA, but you know I have my limits, dammit! I disapproved of Yukariko's shit, I disapproved of Kirei's, and now I disapprove of yours! Misochi's a good kid and she obviously loves you enough as to give herself to you!"

"That wasn't really her, that was-"

"Bullshit, we both heard the report on the damn thing!" Eda protested. "She loves you, you love her, and that's not gonna go away just because you pretend it isn't! Just be a woman and talk it over with her!"

"No! I can't do that, because -"

"And she's already a woman as well!" Eda now poked a finger at her chest angrily. "You know this job doesn't give second chances that easily and she's gonna have to grow the fuck up from now on! It's time you stopped treating her like a child and force her to either get serious or get out, 'cause otherwise you'll get her killed!"

"I try to make her get serious! For the love of God, Eda, what else do you think-"

"You aren't doing anything but nagging her like a fucking kindergarten teacher instead of pulling her up with yourself! You've been treating her as if this job was all about desk jockeying and cleaning the damn place! And you know perfectly it's not like that at all!"

"Is, is jockeying even a real word? Also, you should call the House of God a 'damn pla-"

"For fuck's sake, Shakti!" Eda threw her hands up.

And there was silence.

Below, Misora and Cocone raised their heads for a moment, tried to listen carefully, failed to pick up anything beyond that loud yell, and then went back to their chores.

"Eh," Misora mumbled to herself, unsure of why the notion was bothering her so much. "They are probably just fucking."

Cocone simply nodded in an unreadable silence.

Above, Shakti plummeted on her chair while Eda stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind herself.

Sister Shakti hid her face between her hands and started to cry.

* * *

 _Earth 6228161:_

"I see," said Saber-san, long after Negi's explanation (complete with helpful diagrams he had quickly sketched out during his narration. He was no Haruna, but Shirou could see his experience as a teacher had paid off. The boy was a master with a sketchboard- now, if only Shirou could remember where he had been keeping that sketchbaord in the first place) had begun, and even longer after they all had gathered around the Emiyas' rather wide dinner table. For such a loner, Kiritsugu had always been well prepared for large visits, in more than one sense.

"You see," Chisame weakly echoed, pushing her thick glasses back up her nose. She couldn't believe the cold blood this woman had taken the news with, even if she was supposed to be some sort of hardened ancient warrior.

"Indeed, and given several of the events around the conclusion of the latest Grail War, it wouldn't surprise me if what you are saying is actually true," Saber stoically said.

"Eh?" Shirou blinked, breaking from his thoughts on the subject of sketchboards. "Saber, you took part in the War ten years ago?"

She nodded.

"Wow!" Shirou said. "And who was your Master then?"

Saber stared coldly at him. "Shirou, in whose's tool shed did you happen to summon me, without a catalyst in your hands, and without any conscious effort to do so? I believe that should give you a clue."

Shirou's jaw went slack. "You worked with my father?!"

"Oh my God," Chisame ominously said. "We have _another one_ now."

"Hey," Negi pouted.

Asuna chuckled and whispered to Setsuna, _"Well, at least he actually figured it out. I was sure he wouldn't."_

Setsuna politely nodded and declined to point out Asuna was hardly the fittest person to criticize others' intelligence.

"We might talk about that some other day," Saber told Shirou, clearly uncomfortable with the subject. "Aren't you the slightest concerned, instead, about the matter of the Holy Grail itself being corrupted?"

"Um, actually, no," Shirou replied. "After all, I couldn't stop thinking about what Father Kotomine told me, about how I'd want to use the wish from the Grail for my own goals, and it had me worried, if I or anyone else could be trusted with that sort of power." Then he smiled. "But this really takes that concern off my mind! Now, if the Grail's evil, we have no reason to worry about that! After all, no one should wish on it, so all there's left to do is destroying it!"

"..." Saber, Asuna, Negi, Konoka, Setsuna, Satomi and Chisame said.

Tsunetsuki Matoi, on the other hand, simply nodded sagely and said, "Well thought, Emiya-kun. No wonder I fell in DEEP LOVE with you that summer, after watching you jumping that bar..."

"Gahhhhh, it's you!" Shirou abruptly pulled back from the table, panicking in recognition of a sight from several years ago. "You were here?!"

"Yes, always," Matoi nodded.

"Hadn't you noticed?" Saber asked her Master. "Well, it matters not. If this truly is no misdirection or trickery, then I shall obliterate the Grail itself with my Noble Phantasm. Should that fail, I cannot think of other force in the world up to the task."

"Awfully sure of ourselves, aren'tcha," Asuna observed.

"Asuna-san..." Negi said.

"What's a Noble Phantasm anyway?" Asuna asked.

"Asuna-chan!" Konoka gasped. "You mean don't remember Kuro-chan's lectures anymore?!"

"Well, I remember those really hot Lancer guys, the whole thing about that cursed cup wanting to destroy the world, and about Saber-san here being really skilled at fellatio, but I don't remember anything about Noble Phantoms or Phantasms or whatever! Give me a break, it was too much info and I wasn't taking notes!" Asuna protested.

Saber broke into a sudden, violent fit of choking while Shirou and the rest of the girls blushed deeply.

"... I still don't know what fellatio is," Negi mumbled.

Asuna shrugged. "If it makes you feel any better, I don't either. Maybe that's why it stuck with me, because it sounds so funny, but... maybe we should look it up on the Internet?"

"NO!" Setsuna, Konoka and Chisame yelled at once.

Shirou, in the meanwhile, had slowly edged away from the also slowly crumbling, humbled Saber, but he stopped himself with a start and a yelp when he saw he was moving steadily towards Matoi.

"It's okay, Emiya-kun, I got over my DEEP LOVE for you long ago," Matoi assured him. "Now and forevermore, I shall only love Chisame-sama... well, and a bit of Negi-sama on the side, too," she conceded.

Chisame blinked, then clutched onto Emiya's sleeve. "Sempai. Tell me how you did it. Please!"

"He was oblivious to my needs, overreacted to my displays of affection, treated me as an embarrassment in public, and never understood me," Matoi explained for him. Then she cooed while hugging Chisame. "Nothing like you at all, Chisame-sama!"

"Why me?!" Chisame screamed while Satomi puffed her cheeks up.

Saber, a bit more recovered now, stared at Shirou. "Truly you were a deplorable romantic partner, Shirou. Shame on you."

"She was never my girlfriend!" Shirou said.

"You tell him, Saber-sama!" Matoi said while Chisame tried to peel her off herself. "Never give him fellatio, even if he begs you for it!"

"I have no idea what are you talking about!" the Lion of Camelot roared at her.

* * *

 _Earth 10534103:_

The door was opened from the outside and Nodoka, wrapped in a bed sheet and a tempered sensation of physical fulfillment mixed with emotional unfulfillment (Yue could tell. Yue knew her that well), came in. "I'm back," she announced.

"Welcome home," said Yue, looking levelly at her from where she sat on her favorite chair, fully dressed and taking notes on a small black book. "Wasn't the plan to call in sick today and switch over around noon?"

"GAH!" the red-haired young woman with small breasts sitting on their couch jerked back, quickly backing away against Chizuru, who had been sitting close to her. She instinctively reached for Chizuru's midsection, hugging it tightly like a scared child looking for her mother's protection, until she felt Chizuru's substantial bustline rubbing against her scalp. Then she backed away from her as well. "GAH GAH GAH GAH! GAH!"

"The plan was also not to have Fate show up just after dawn and start making a pest of himself," Nodoka replied, letting the sheet drop and walking over to the dresser to start pulling out clothes, all the while Lina Inverse kept on freaking even further, waving her arms madly. "The plan clearly did not survive contact with the enemy."

"Nodoka, please," Yue told her. "This isn't helping Lina-san."

"Sorry, sorry, I'll get dressed as quickly as possible," Nodoka quietly said, carefully looking through her selection of clothes. "By the way, good evening, Chizuru-san. How are things going with-"

"So Fate made his move!?" Anya, who had been sitting on another chair also helping with the therapy session, yelped. "How, how come you're still alive!?"

Nodoka put on her bra and looked at Anya, then back and forth between their still panicking guest and her classmates with a strange, thoughtful expression on her face, then shrugged while picking up her panties. "He's learned how to pick his battles, I suppose. And it's not like he's in any condition to openly move against us over this. Anyway, Anya-chan, I don't think you should worry about him, yet. Of course, that might change after you join Negi tonight, but-"

"No, you shouldn't keep on doing those things, they're evil things, dirty things, why do you keep doing them, Oneesama will find out and punish, punish you, us, me!" Lina Inverse cried desperately.

Anya frowned, gave Lina another look, then asked Nodoka, "You sure this actually is the Dragon Spooker, Enemy of All Living Things herself?"

"I've looked into her mind more than once, remember?" Nodoka said while zipping her skirt up. "It's just we all have our weak spots, even the strongest of us. It was a stroke of tragic luck hers happened to be, well..."

"I was a virgin, a virgin, a virgin, damn it!" Lina sobbed, taking both hands to her hair and yanking her own head down to her lap.

Nodoka sighed again. "How is Princess Amelia taking it, then?"

"Actually, she pretty much got over it already, said she held nothing against no one, and even told Lina-san she was glad her first time had been with such a wonderful friend," Chizuru reported, "but-"

Lina was now bashing her own head against her knees. "I'm not a, a, a, one of those women, I was supposed to marry a good filthy rich man and, and and lead a filthy rich adventuring life and and and and and!"

"- Lina-san didn't take it that well," Chizuru finished. "Maybe we should leave it for Shizuna-sensei, as soon as she recovers ..."

"That might take a while," Yue reminded her.

"Well, at least it's good to know there's still someone slightly more scared out of her mind than me right now," Anya bitterly commented.

"Now, now, Anya-chan," Chizuru maternally said, "you can't keep escaping your feelings however. Whether they are feelings of love or fear. You must face your fear of Fate-sensei directly, much like we do every morning, while sitting down to gaze into those cold, inhuman eyes fixed on us with contempt and a complete lack of any human warmth..."

"Which is still easier than facing Murakami-san right now?" Anya guessed.

"Well, he made me prepared for that, so I suppose I should be thankful to him in that regard," Chizuru conceded.

"But there's a better solution to the problem!" Anya said. "I just won't do it!"

"... but that's the exact opposite of what I've just told you, Anya dear," Chizuru patiently said.

Lina now rocked back and forth, hugging her knees. "No, no, no, fear is good, fear keeps us from being shameful shames to our families, sorry, Oneesama, don't hit me, no, no, you will never learn... maybe if I kill everyone who knows..."

Now Nodoka, Chizuru, Anya and Yue all paused, looking at her in union.

Lina gave them a haunted gaze and smiled creepily. "Of course I'm just joking, Lina-chan wouldn't do that... Lina-chan is a good girl like her Oneesama wants ..."

"Good," Nodoka firmly said, in a way that made the vulnerable black sorceress wince slightly. "Anyway, Anya-chan, you shouldn't back away now. It's become a matter of honoring your word. Because it was your idea in the first place," she reminded her.

"It was that Shiori girl's idea in the first place, I just came up with the means and then got talked into joining in eventually," Anya replied quickly. "That's how it was, I swear! I haven't really joined in yet!" she stuttered when Lina's head snapped aside almost impossibly, and those spooky red eyes focused squarely on her. "And anyway, I've had second thoughts about the whole thing. Make that third or fourth thoughts, even! Fifth thoughts, after that weirdo who claimed to be my kid started talking to me!"

"Gooooood..." Lina crooned very slowly.

"She's really like you," Nodoka observed to Yue.

"Which one?" Yue asked, curiously.

"Exactly."

"... I can't really argue with that," Yue agreed, shaking her head sorrowfully. "Are we going to drag her in like you dragged me?"

"Let's not!" Anya interjected. "For pity's sake, Fate is involved now! Don't you realize what that means?"

 _"He, will, cleanse, the, sinful, Earth, purify, the, wicked,"_ the broken Inverse sing-sang. _"Lina-chan, will, not, die, because, she is, a good, little, girl, like Oneesama wanted..."_

"I know that he's a little scary, Anya-chan, but-" Nodoka started to say, trying her best to ignore the madwoman.

"No, see, that's the thing! He's not a little scary. He is an oh-god-I-don't-believe-in-that-is-terrifying amount of scary!" Anya interrupted. Whatever trifling battlefield encounters and later classroom ordeals this girls had undertaken did not rate in comparison to being held hostage by Fate and his minions for months, always wondering if this would be the day that they'd decide that her presence was surplus to requirements. She doubted that anything, even being petrified by Fate, could possibly rate.

 _"Good, little, girl, like Oneesama wanted..."_

... although Lina-san would likely disagree if she could express herself rationally, Anya conceded.

"I still think you're really overreacting, Anya-chan," said Nodoka as she started to bunch her hair back, like she had done back at Kyoto while preparing herself for her first date. Yue knew that was one of her habits to cope with great challenges laying ahead. "But if you're really that frightened of him, it's okay. Because..." And here she paused, and smiled at Yue, who nodded.

And then, in perfect synchronicity, Nodoka, Yue and Chizuru chorused, "That guy is going down."

Anya stared at them for a full minute before she let out the shriek she'd been holding back. "Are you kidding me? Your solution to the problem of the superhuman monster who's threatening us is to provoke him further? To make him finally lose his grip and kill us all? Seriously?"

"It sounds like the best course of action, as long as the two of us remain out of his rightful wrath, reborn under the healing wings of the goddess of regret," Lina saintly said, now sitting with her hands on her knees and her back strangely straight and stiff, her eyes unfocused.

"Anya-chan!" Nodoka gasped. "Calm down, please!"

"You!" Anya pointed at Chizuru. "You Motherly Big Breasted Woman, you're supposed to be the status quo-supporting voice of reason, aren't you? Use your elite gifts to explain these girls why they shouldn't revolt against the system like that!"

"I once knew a big breasted woman who was not motherly at all," Lina absently said, a corner of her mouth twitching quite oddly. "She had a similar faint aura of twisted aristocracy to her, but it's kinda funny I never realized it then."

"I'm sorry, Anya-chan," Naba said, gently wagging a finger. "But, recent events have proved to me, one's loyalties must lie with those one's heart is the closest to, rather than those who may exert legitimate power over us, but misuse it out of a misguided sense of entitlement. I know someday you'll understand."

"I'll have to be ALIVE to do that!"

"So, are you rejecting your father's designs for you after all?" Yue asked Chizuru, sounding vaguely hopeful ... and completely ignoring Anya's ongoing meltdown.

"I wouldn't say that just that yet."

"How about you, Inverse-san?" Nodoka asked Lina. "You are, after all, a mercenary unafraid of taking on any foe for a good pay. Craig-san and the others would say that all the time." Plus other, far less flattering things, but this was not the time to mention that. "Would you help us for a reasonable fee?"

"I'm assuming that fee will come from me, specifically?" Chizuru wondered aloud, two fingers on a cheek.

"Of course not," Miyazaki calmly told her, "we never would dream of recruiting anyone's paid services with your money without consulting you first, Chizuru-san."

"Ah. Because I wouldn't mind paying myself, but I'm not sure my father would app -"

"I'm sure Iinchou-san will be glad to provide the money!" Nodoka said with a bright, kind smile, before turning back to Lina and patting her soothingly on a shoulder.

"..." said Chizuru.

Lina briefly shuddered at the contact with another woman, but then, seemingly somewhat stabilized by the mention of money and past glimpses of her greedy self briefly peeking out, she kept enough of her old presence of mind to ask, "That, that might be, but, to move against he, who would have placed Lina-chan in a perfect world of gold coins and great adventures, where no le, les, lesb, no twisted woman would dare corrupting the perfect education Oneesama had given Lina-cha-"

"Without Fate-sensei's involvement," Nodoka warmly reasoned, still all smiles and cuteness, "Negi-sensei would have never passed for an adult to engage into negotiations while posessing the Magia Erebea Fate-sensei forced him to adopt. Thus, he would never have engaged into, ah, twisted carnal contacts with all of us, which means the World Tree would never have forced Inverse-san to engage into those awful, awful things that would make her Oneesama so disappointed and angry if she ever learned about them. Which she won't, but that's besides the point. The point is, this is all Fate-sensei's fault. So, will you help us against that great evil, Inverse-san?"

Lina blinked, looked at Nodoka with gigantic, bugging eyes, and then grimaced horribly, flashing all sorts of hideous sharp teeth as a black aura enveloped her. _**"That guy's going down,"**_ she agreed, more primal monster than Hayashibara Megumi.

"... wow," Chizuru very quietly said. "And to think I never suspected her. Eva-san, right, sometimes, I thought I was sure there was something about her, but she..."

Yue nodded. "Now do you see why she means so much to me?"

"Eeeeehhhhh... I suppose I do," Chizuru said as non-confrontationally as she could, nodding back.

"Ohhhhhkay, then," Anya declared. "It's your funeral, but don't count me in! I'm not *that* crazy yet!" And with that, she threw her hands up and exited the room quite briskly.

"What am I gonna do?" she asked herself as she made her way down the hallway. "What am I going to do?"

* * *

"What am I gonna do?" another Anya Cocolova, elsewhere, asked herself as she quickly stuffed pieces of clothing into the open luggage set on her bed. "What am I going to do?"

"And now what do you think you're doing?" another voice asked from her doorway.

"I don't know!" she snapped angrily. "You idiot, that's why I'm asking myself what am I gonna- GACK!" she spun around while her little dog familiar hugged her legs and whimpered, trying to hide behind her. "This isn't what it looks like, Master Blood! I wasn't going to stupidly run away just to go save that idiot Negi before he gets himself killed! And, and I was going to leave a note anyway!"

Jason Blood took a long look around the unusually disarranged bedroom of the girl, stuck his hands into the pockets of his black longcoat, and said, "I see. So Etrigan was right. This is another one he isn't going to let go anytime soon. Anya, are you aware I'm supposed to disqualify you if you abandon the duties imposed upon you by the spirits unless I see fit to grant you a license of leave?"

"So… would you give me a license of leave, then, Master?" Anya meekly asked. "Please?"

The man with the white streak on his hair shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't grant you a license so you can go interfere into the assignment given to another student. You know better, and the Association will take it as either attempted sabotage or cheating. In the case of the latter, Negi himself might get suspended as well."

"But-! But-!"

"Why don't you wait until the summer break? It's only a few weeks until then. Little more than one month. Then, I can at least give you a vacation."

"But it's a Grail War!" Anya protested. "It won't last until then, by that time it'll have finished with a massacre! You know how those things go! By then Negi will be killed off, unless I pluck him out first!"

"Then contact his sister. As his legal guardian, she can at least go there for him without throwing her studies down the toilet."

"I've tried!" Anya cried. "But I can't reach her either! I'm dead worried about both of them, but I only know where Negi is, so I might as well start there! Your nasty demon wouldn't show me where Nekane is!"

Jason Blood shrugged. "Etrigan is not a relief hotline, Anya. I'm surprised he helped you as much as he did, and now, I'm not even sure if he didn't do it to set you up for a fall."

"All the same, I have to go. Sorry!" she pouted, closing her luggage, throwing an extra bag around her shoulders, and standing firmly before the man blocking her way out.

He half smirked. "So you aren't wondering what to do anymore? That's some fast progress."

The small girl growled, in a way she actually had copied from Etrigan.

Jason Blood stepped aside. "It's your decision. If you fail to return before I have delivered my report, you will be legally considered the one to have failed at your obligations, not me."

"I know that," Anya nodded once, while ignoring Courage's whimpers and whines as he tugged on her skirt, urging her to stay. "But please remember, while writing that report, Negi in no way asked for my help. Because he's too stupid to realize when he's over his head, even if he knew I know!"

"Do I also mention he's stupid?" the man asked. "Because I imagine that would also reflect badly on his performance rev—"

"Just the first part, okay?!"

Jason Blood sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "All of that sounds like such a bother to put down on paper. And now I'll be without a secretary, too. It might take me a while…"

"Thank you very much, Master Blood," she bowed.

"Not that you should take as a cue to linger long," he warned. "I've been known to suffer sudden urges to get things done every once in a while."

"I promise I'll get back as soon as possible," she said with a hand on her heart. "Please tell the neighbors—"

"You were called back home, I know that, 'dear niece'. Well, go before either of us changes their mind, then. Especially you. As for me, I learned long ago I shouldn't try to against the wishes of strong willed women."

"Huh?" Anya blinked. "I didn't know you ever were married…"

"Actually, I'm talking about the reason why I had Etrigan bonded to me." He gestured vaguely with a hand. "I'll tell you about it when you and Negi come back. It's a very interesting tale, particularly for a History enthusiast as him."

"Um, thank you, Master Blood," Anya said, trying to remember when she had told him about Negi's love for History, and failing to do so. "Come on, Courage," she urged as she went out through the door.

The dog sobbed a little, stood on his scrawny hind legs, gave the immortal a jaded, salty look, and outright spoke, "The things I do for love," before following Anya outside.

The immortal looked at them go and then rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

* * *

Before we make our way back to the other world, let us return our attentions to the Mahora of Unequality, where, deep under the fabled campus, three teens could not help but gape in awe as a fourth student showed them around a gigantic chamber of silver walls and impossibly high ceilings, that easily dwarfed the group in size. The chamber was several classrooms worth of space, an utterly thrilled Aida Kensuke estimated while eagerly filming the surroundings with his trusty hand camera, his attention quickly going back and forth from one fascinating point equipped with cutting edge technology to the other.

Even Suzuhara Touji, gorilla goon that he was, could not hide his sense of wonder (and confusion) at the site he had adamantly refused to visit a couple hours ago. "Can't believe it, at all," the dark haired young man murmured, while the freckled and slim Horaki Hikari held one of his hands, herself rather rattled out of her wits, and even a bit scared at the implications of what they were seeing. "Dammit, Soryu! How could you and that Chinese chick set up all of this junk just by yourselves?!"

Standing at the lead of the small group, Soryu Asuka Langley smirked petulantly, pushing the Professor Glasses she only needed for show up her nose with an elegantly raised middle finger. "I'd be glad to answer your question, Thug, but I wouldn't want to break your feeble mind. Aida, be warned you'll have to leave the camera here before leaving. You can have it back when the Festival's over."

The scrawny boy with glasses blinked. "Eh? Why's that?"

"Idiot, this is supposed to be a surprise for everybody, that's why!" the redhead briskly snapped at him. "One false step concerning this, and Chao'll have all our heads! But not before I kick your useless asses 'til you're tasting your hemorrhoids!"

"That doesn't even make any-" Touji began murmuring agressively before Hikari silenced him with a discreet elbow to his stomach. The boy was about to demand why she'd done that when his attention was caught by the same thing that had just caught his not-girlfriend's, and their jaws loosened in perfect synchrony. Kensuke's was dancing up and down in place, drool escaping from its corners while he also beheld the pool Asuka had led them towards; a massive square pool filled with a faintly reddish liquid, in which there was a large bipedal machine similar to an elaborate design from some fantastic mecha anime. Its shoulders and sharply angled face were above the surface, the rest of it vaguely visible underneath, submerged under the strong illumination from several lamps set on the ceiling, directly above it. "What the flippin' fuck is that?!"

"Impressive, huh?" Asuka chuckled proudly. "I've gotta admit Chao came up with the design, but I improved a lot on it, naturally. We call it Unit 02, and... it's mine!"

"'Mine'?" Hikari weakly asked her friend, her eyes growing larger and rounder by the moment.

"And there's one for each of you too, if you want them," Asuka said, very nonchalantly. "Yeah, even for you, Suzuhara. That's why I brought you guys here. They're wonders of technology, but also so amazingly easy to pilot even a monkey could do it!"

"Really?!" Aida squealed girlishly, his eyes growing full of baby blue stars. "Asuka-san, you're the best!"

"Wait, wait, wait!" Touji gestured wildly, shaking Hikari's now colder and trembling hand off without realizing it had ever been on his in the first place. "You mean these things can move?! And that there's actually more than one of them?! How did you get 'em made anyway? Even if you stole the whole budget from your labs, there's just no way! Even the government couldn't come up with this crap!"

Asuka shrugged. "Chao's loaded."

"I don't care if she's Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne together in a single Chinese chick suit, they still wouldn't have the money for this crap!" Touji protested.

Asuka shook her head. "Suzuhara, Suzuhara, Suzuhara. Ye man of little faith! Women of great intellect like ourselves can easily come up with new ways to develop amazing inventions under budgets that only would feed the fat pockets of government officers if we were to work for them! That's the power of Free Science! What, can't your tiny ape brain comprehend that much?"

Hikari squinted suspiciously. "And Chao-san and you are just using this radical new technology to help liven up a school festival? Really, Asuka-chan?"

"Well, Chao's an eccentric," Asuka admitted. "Plus, once everyone in the Four Schools get to see what we're able to do, we'll instantly become celebrities, I'm sure. It's pure common sense, Hikari-chan!"

"I guess it does," a still clearly troubled Hikari pondered, "but even so-"

"I'm in! I'm in, I'm in, I'm in!" Kensuke wailed tears of happiness while waving a hand up and down.

Asuka nodded his way. "I knew you would, but remember, not a word to anyone until then. Or else I'll feed you your balls, and even worse, you'll never get to actually sit inside of one of these babies."

"My lips are sealed, O Most Excellent Ma'am, Goddess of Sciences and Heavy Weaponry!" Kensuke sobbed gleefully.

Asuka hummed. "Ohhh, I actually kinda like the sound of that ..."

Touji grunted, fists on his hips. "Fine, whatever, if my pal's in, I'm not gonna chicken out on him either. Right, Bro?" he asked, holding a fist up for Kensuke. After realizing said other boy was still too busy staring at the Unit 02 and filming it, Touji simply withdrew his fist back with a grunt of mild disgust. "Seriously, buddy, you make me really worried sumtimes."

"Yeah, well, about that whole 'weaponry' thing, Asuka-chan," Hikari nervously asked her best friend, "you haven't actually put guns or anything on these things, have you?"

"Oh, you mean like Chao and her classmate did on Chachamaru?" Asuka asked back. "Well, not precisely. We're going to use them for a war game of sorts, so weapons are needed, but they'll be perfectly harmless trick weapons, that's all. No one's gonna get hurt or anything."

"What's a Chachamaru?" Touji grunted.

"You don't know?" Kensuke asked. "The robot girl."

"Which robot girl?! Don't give me that crap!"

"The green haired one! The cute one in Negi-sensei's class!" Kensuke protested. "You said she was kinda pretty, remember?!"

"He did?" Hikari's head snapped back to him, suddenly far less concerned and far more threatening.

"That's supposed to be a robot?! No fucking way!" Touji ignored her altogether. "You're pulling my leg!"

"... you really didn't know?" Kensuke said. "I thought it was very obvious."

"These eggheads could invent robots as tall as a house and a robot that can pass for a human on a schoolgirl's budget and still are wasting their time at junior high?!" Touji yelled. "That makes no fucking sense, why aren't they taking over the world then?!"

"... maybe because that'd be a lot of annoying work?"

"More work than creating a fucking human robot in the first place?!"

Hikari paused and again looked at Asuka. "You know, I think he has a point there, after all."

Asuka's right eyebrow twitched. "Ohhhh, just take that to Chao after we're done, will you?!"

* * *

 _Earth 10534103:_

Very early that morning, Saeki Kaori stopped before a certain door down the hall of the third floor of the dorm building for the High School female students, checked on a number she had copied on her cellphone the day before, nodded pensively to herself, and reached with a finger towards the door's bell.

"Saeki-san, please don't," a voice warned her.

The leggy blonde allowed herself a fleeting grimace before looking back, feigning a neutral smile. "Takashiro-sensei!" she greeted with practiced good nature. "How unusual, meeting you here so early!"

"I was assigned to help Kitami-san, and I take my chores very seriously, Saeki-san," the red haired teacher answered, walking closer to the almost as tall and busty magic-obsessed student. "She's still in shock and confusion, and I really think she should be allowed to sleep until late for now."

"I only was going to offer her my help," Saeki piously said, hands coming together. "After all, Kitami-sensei and me had become quite close lately. If there's anything I can do for her..."

"I thank you for your... human interest, Saeki-san," the grown woman nodded, "But the current situation involving her is still unclear, and for her own safety and yours, we think you should wait until clearance from the faculty arrives to... engage in personal contact with her."

"I see," Saeki said, barely able to hide her frustration and cold annoyance. "Well, then, what about the other matter?"

"Which other matter, Saeki-san?" Hiroko innocently asked.

"You know what I'm talking about. I've heard the rumors. One of those children who showed out of nowhere claiming to be Negi-sensei's future children ... claims being my daughter as well. I think that makes me entitled to know the truth about her."

"Yes, I imagine you do feel entitled. You can rest assured that you'll know the truth as soon as we learn it ourselves, Saeki-san. As it is now, that subject is out of my jurisdiction. Someone far better suited to the task is currently questioning and researching them. In the meanwhile, I'd be grateful if you could tell me where and how you learned that information in the first place."

"I'm sorry, Sensei," Saeki said, tossing her long golden ponytail back and swinging her shapely hips as she began walking away. "But I think we'd better talk about that later. Right now, I should be at classes, and shouldn't you as well, for that matter?"

Hiroko narrowed her violet eyes while watching her go. "This isn't over yet, Saeki-san," she promised.

"Oh, of course it isn't, Sensei. Count on it, and in the meanwhile... have a nice day."

And she was gone.

Hiroko stood silent and still for a moment, deeply contemplating something, and then rang on Kitami's door herself.

* * *

 _Back to Earth 6228161:_

The much older guard that had been crouched down by his fallen, unconscious partner at the same exact spot Natsuki and Kazumi had visited only minutes ago gasped when he realized two gorgeous, mostly naked girls with night goggles on where running towards them from Wing T-3, the one in the lead holding a gun in each hand. Since in his line of work that was a sign of alert rather than anything else, he just sprang back to his feet, rather than springing up in any other way. That, and he was, as mentioned, old. Not old enough he wasn't still rather fast, however.

"Halt!" he growled, aiming his hand lamp at the intruders, and taking aim with his handgun at the same time. He squeezed the trigger, but fast as he was, Kuga Natsuki was still faster. While Kazumi shrieked and rolled aside, Kuga, who had made sure of adjusting her goggles better after last time, easily ducked under the potentially lethal shot, then efficiently shot the man in the gut with her stunguns. It only took a moment for the guard to drop cold on top of his partner, and Kuga again grabbed Asakura's hand and took her along, both leaping over the men and heading back the same way they had come in while infiltering the laboratories.

From there, the rest was easy.

* * *

 _Earth 10534103:_

Taking a moment to remind herself that this was, in fact, her own idea, Anya knocked on the door to announce herself, and then went in. She was pleasantly surprised to find that Negi did not in fact have girls literally hanging all over him at the moment. Instead, he was sitting on the couch, in his aged up form, beside that Akira girl, both of them doing their best to look as though they hadn't been frantically sucking face before the knock on the door. Anya supposed that someone else might have been fooled. There also was that much more annoying (Although also much flatter, to somewhat make up for it in Anya's mind. Not enough, though) Makie girl, but she was thankfully napping on a nearby couch, legs swung up in a way only a gymnast might find comfortable, and drool leaking out a corner of her wide open mouth.

"Good morning, Anya," Negi said, faux-cheerfully. "Is something the matter?"

"Yes," she answered reflexively, and was rewarded by the sight of the two of them sitting up even straighter than they had been, breath quickening and all that. "But also no," she added quickly, and saw them subside a bit. _Agggh, she thought, why am I so nervous, you'd think that I liiiiii-errk_. She forced herself to stop thinking, which unfortunately made it somewhat hard to speak.

"Anya-san?" Akira asked after a moment.

"Anya-chan?!" Makie's eyes instantly flew open, mouth coming closed with a final, thicker glop of drool.

Thoughts successfully restarted, Anya began again. "You can go back to sleep, Sasaki-san. Don't mind about me, I won't, won't take long. Ahem. Negi, Akira-san. I," she declared, "have been thinking."

When it became apparent that this statement was apparently meant to stand alone, Negi was moved to reply, "That's a good habit to get into."

Makie sat up and scratched the back of her neck. "Yeah, I guess, when you don't, people kinda start mocking you all the time."

Annoyed that Makie was not going back to sleep, but mostly that, once again, Negi was not following the script, Anya coughed loudly. "I have been thinking, specifically, that, now that you are no longer an undying immortal, you will once again require pactio partners who can assist you in battle. And, since I already have some experience in the area of keeping you out of trouble, I thought that I might volunteer. For the job. So. How about it?"

"Oh!" Negi said, blinking. "Well, I'm very flattered, Anya, but I don't think that you need to -"

Anya coughed loudly again.

"Yeah, Negi-kun already has lots and lots of partners, and even that new Kitami-san who showed up has the card Kitami-sensei got, not that I'm saying you wouldn't be welcome too," Makie expanded. "But I thought you wanted to be a Magistra, not a-"

Anya stared bloody murder at her.

"... I think I have to go pee," Makie said, blinking a few times and then bolting for the bathroom.

"Right," Anya dryly approved before focusing that very same stare on Negi instead. "I was asking Akira-san, not either of you," she said flatly.

"You were?" he asked, startled.

"You were?" Akira asked, invisibly startled.

Anya began to speak uncomfortably. "Even if you and Makie-san have... well, accepted each other as mutual, how shall we say it, main, ah, sentimental, partners-"

Negi rubbed the back of his neck with a blush and a lowering of gaze, while Akira looked aside uneasily. "That," he said, "that technically is still just an unspoken agreement of sorts, set for the time being to see if we are compatible with each other and..."

"Well, it hasn't stopped you from doing it like rabbits in the meanwhile!" Anya exploded. "Still, it's Akira-san who is the... permanent pactio partner regardless! And so, she- you," Anya corrected, turning from Negi to Akira as she did, "should be the one to make decisions about who gets to make a probationary pactio with your magister. That's only right!"

"I see," said Akira, blinking as she considered this weighty responsibility which had descended on her.

Anya nodded in emphasis, and prepared for a long series of questions about her intentions and experience.

Akira nodded back. "All right, then. Go ahead and do it."

"Yeah, do it! The other primary girl approves as well!" a cheery Makie chirped, walking out of the bathroom while wiping her hands dry. "I'm sure Asuna would agree, too, if she wasn't busy sulking in the shower."

"I'm not sulking!" came a shout from the bathroom.

Anya briefly found herself yearning for the days when Negi only slightly departed from the script. "Just like that?" she asked, hollowly.

"Really?" Negi asked, no less startled, though perhaps for slightly different reasons.

"Well, I think it's still more of Makie's call to make than mine," Akira answered Negi, blushing slightly, "I don't understand why the magical system would think otherwise, but even if it fell to me, if I had to make the decisions about our... relationship, I would just ask myself one question, over and over again. What would Makie do?"

"Awww, that's so sweet of you, Akira-chan!" Makie swooned, hands clamped together. "Does that mean you're ready now to-"

"Sorry, but I think I'm not ready to take that step with you just yet!" Akira quickly made clear.

"Nuts! Darn my all too sisterly cute looks!"

Negi visibly swallowed. "Ah, that's nice to know, Akira-san. And, uh, it's all right to be a little less generous than Maki-chan."

"Really?" Makie asked.

"That's why she's not taking the step," he explained quickly.

"Ohhhhh," the gymnast said in a tone of great enlightenment.

Anya coughed again, seeing fairly clear signs that her presence had almost been forgotten as these three disappeared into their own little world. "Okay then." She'd hoped for some more time, but what could not be cured must be endured. "Let's do it," she concluded, pulling out her own jar of age-up pills.

"Um, Anya, there's just one thing," Negi interjected.

She froze. "What, what?"

"... even if you age yourself up, the picture on the card will still reflect your actual age," he told her. "And appearance. And -"

With an effort which should, in her opinion, make her a latter day legend, Anya controlled her urge to beat Negi senseless. "I know that," she growled.

Makie blinked. "Why would that ever be a problem? Anya-chan is just so pretty the way she already is, I could just simply-"

"I know, which is why there's no need to dwell on that in the first place!" Anya shrieked at her.

* * *

 _Earth 6228161:_

"Well? Did you have fun?" Kuga asked dryly as the three of them left the boat at the other side of the small bay, then began climbing up the rocky slide towards the highway and its borders, fully flanked by thick, thorny bushes. The sun already was coming up the East horizon, and Asakura knew they'd have to be fast if they didn't want to be tardy and get asked a whole lot of uncomfortable questions. Although Kuga-sempai was well used to that by now. It didn't have to mean her own near flawless record had to get tarnished too, Asakura thought, but then,nobody ever said the road to become a star reporter would be an easy one.

"Yeah," the redhead said, sighing as Chachamaru gently pulled her the rest of the way up with Natsuki and herself. "But I betcha the fun stops when those guards tell their bosses about us and they make accurate portraits of our faces."

"No problem," Natsuki shrugged. "The stun bullets Chao gave me contain the same magical spellcraft the Associations use to wipe short term memories. Those guys should wake up with no clue of what hit them. Besides, I don't think either of them was looking at your face."

Kazumi had to chuckle at that. "Yeah, you may be right about that." She folded her arms right under her impressive bossom and pushed the skimpy bikini top-clad breasts slightly up. "What can I say, Sempai? Some of us are born with it, and some are oh my God," she gasped. Chachamaru, who had been leading the march, had halted right before the tall set of bushes where they had hid Natsuki's motorcycle early last night, and now held an outstretched arm before them to block their way.

The bushes by the road had been burnt and stomped, literally shredded in all directions, and the expensive bike at their middle had been crumpled and twisted into a compact mass of black metal. Natsuki's eyes watered despite herself as her face paled hideously, but Kazumi was more terrified than livid in outrage as Kuga was. For she could read the Western letters spray painted on the bike's remains, all over it.

 _ **HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA**_.

Kazumi swallowed the huge dry knot in her throat and stammered, "W-Well… no prob, it surely was nothing but a gang of punks passing along, who happened to see the bike and—"

"Sword marks," Chachamaru said.

"I beg your pardon?" Asakura asked.

Chachamaru pointed at several spots on the damaged metal frame. "Kuga-sempai's vehicle of choice was not only burnt and physically squeezed into a roughly spherical shape by what seems to have left prints of small human hands. It also was pierced repeated times by a sharp blade, with a technique that would seem to match Sakurazaki-san's, even if also fueled by far greater savagery."

"I was afraid you'd say that," Kazumi gulped.

"There is no immediate apparent threat, however," Chachamaru added, her sight scanning the surroundings. "I get no readings of any hostile presences around the close perimeter. And the act of vandalism would seem to have been perpetrated hours ago. Whoever commited it should have left before being detected, probably after looking for us in vain."

"Great," Natsuki finally said, running a hand down her tense, sweaty face. "Okay. Fine, no problem. Chao said she'd cover any expenses. So I'm sure she'll damn pay for my damn fine Ducati, and so, I'm not going to get mad and take it out on any machine of hers either."

"A wise course of action, Sempai," Chachamaru kindly complimented.

"However," Kuga glared at her. "Now I expect for said machine of Chao to take me home, since MY machine obviously can't do that anymore."

"I apologize, but my protocols in such an event forbid me from taking flight with any passengers," Karakuri reported. "Not only I could be seen by casual bystanders who might carry on unwanted inquiries afterwards, but such a visible position in the sky would make us clear targets for any of the suspected offenders in this transgression."

"What?!" Kuga shouted.

"She said," Kazumi translated, "that weird fire kid you guys met at Kyoto might see—"

"I know that!" Natsuki protested. "What I mean is, how are we supposed to get back home if she can't fly us! Are you calling Chao to pick us up?!"

Chachamaru gently shook her head. "Negative. If the entity known as Temptress is involved, the reports established by Negi-sensei and Hasegawa-san indicate she is an expert on picking and interrupting electrical and bio-electrical transmissions. The security of the whole network might be compromised."

"Sweet, just sweet," Natsuki hissed bitterly. "What, are we supposed to walk all the way to Mahora then?!"

Asakura hummed, then smiled and snapped her fingers. "You know, I think I might just have a workable solution for that!"

* * *

Sitting in the back of the Fujinos' favorite limousine, side by side, Fujino Shizuru and Suzushiro Haruka had, at long last, found some common ground.

It was a shame neither of them could voice that at the moment, but then, neither would have wanted to anyway.

Still, President and Vice President had silently bonded, in a way that perhaps would even last the whole Festival before blessed normalcy returned, during the past night, all through the meeting with the other Presidents and Vice Presidents of the Four Schools. And the long road trip to Mahora, through the dawn's early light, had barely been any more bearable.

There were Kiryuu Touga and Saionji Kyouichi, from Ohtori, whom Haruka found creepily disgusting, and yet, to her growing horror, to be the most bearable members of the entourage. There had been something that should have bonded her to Kiryuu, in how it had turned out his sister had disappeared in the same strange incident at Tokyo Tower that had claimed Yukino, but the young man's cold and confident borderline indifference when Haruka had spoken to him on the subject had downright turned her off him. As for his green haired cohort, Haruka just thought he was a disgusting sexist pig, that he and Kiryuu were too close for her comfort, and that a man shouldn't have his hair done that way.

After those, there were Jinnai Katsuhito and Kadotani Anzu from CLAMP Gakuen, one of whom was a loudmouthed, insufferable braggart, and the other one being a far too tiny, elementary student-looking pipsqueak, as well as being critically detached from reality and almost as insufferable, not that Haruka could ever pronounce that word, or Kadotani's name for that matter, correctly.

"So," the pale young man with the disturbingly wide smile and the slick, carefully combed black hair kept on boasting, fist firmly tightened and even moving slowly in a way that reminded Haruka too much of her own father. "Then I told him, 'Then how come you don't have the proof, Mizuhara-kun?' And of course, he had nothing to say! It had finally left him speechless, and that was the sweetest day of my life! Oh ho ho ho ho!"

There was also the way that he had the most annoying laughter Haruka had ever heard. Even Yukihiro's paled in comparison.

And finally, of course, there also were the two that made Haruka, and even Shizuru, the most wary of all. Not so much the diminutive (although never as much as Kadotani) girl with pink short hair, but the towering, statuesque, adult looking female sitting by her side, carrying a ceremonial sword with herself with as little concern as Negi-sensei would hold his staff. Haruka had long admired Kiryuin Satsuki's legend, that of the steel fisted ruler who had established a strong control over the unruly School of Hell as soon as she arrived there from Mahora, when she was only a child. And now, meeting the girl in person, she had to admit to being fascinated by her powerful, precise manners, her commanding attitude that wasted no movement or word, her evident power... not to mention her oddly alluring voice. And yet, despite herself, the main emotion Kiryuin inspired in her now, after meeting her in the flesh, was fear. A blunt sensation of dread that insunflated an icy respect into Haruka, despite her brave attempts to not show it.

Haruka's heart almost skipped a beat when she heard the black haired princess of Honnouji dryly comment at the tail end of Jinnai's tale, "However, are you truly sure you made all evidence disappear?"

Jinnai, so far, had been the only one in the car, chauffeur included, who had not seemed intimidated in the slightest by Kiryuin's presence. Foolishly oblivious to Kiryuin's quiet disapproving attitude, he had told his stories with little or no care, but now this piercing question had finally made him stop his cackles, his shifty eyes rotating towards Satsuki, like those of a chameleon. "Evidence? Ah, which evidence, Kiryuin-san? Maybe you have missed a few details in my narration? I'm a fair, honest politician, so of course there never was any evidence of any wrongdoing. It was all just a bluff, a misguided attempt of that blasted Mizuhara Makoto on my person! Ooohhhh, that envious Mizuhara Makoto!" he bristled almost comically. "I'll have him thrown out yet! Before the school year is over!"

His Vice President, who played her cards far closer to her flat chest and knew much better how to keep a pleasant, docile presence before the most dangerous person in the car, only laughed lightly, resorting to well practiced routines of defusing the young man's ego. For a while at least. "Eh he he he, stop it already, Katsu-kun. Why bother fighting Mizuhara-kun so much?"

Jinnai huffed as his hands rested squarely on his knees, fingers tapping on the bone under the blue dressing pants and the thin flesh of the skinny student. "He's the worst thing that might have happened to our Academy, I tell you! Why, to even turn my sister against myself -"

"I see," Kiryuin impassively said. "Well, I am sure if all of those claims he held against you were true, then you would have long ago disposed of him."

"Exactly!" Jinnai nodded vigorously before pausing, torn in sudden confusion. Had she just challenged his competence at being underhanded, just humored his claims of being honest, his implicit claims of being underhanded, or all of those at once? Faced with such a strange conundrum, Jinnai Katsuhito sat back in a perplexed silence and everyone else, silently, admitted they had to be thankful to Kiryuin now.

Perhaps to find a new topic more of her mistress' liking, the pink haired companion looked out the window, at a turn of the road ahead, and sneered, "Fujino-san?" she nasally asked, the dismissive sneer almost making Haruka to feel sympathy for Fujino. "Is this a common sight in the districts surrounding your school?"

* * *

Mere moments ago, Kuga Natsuki had stepped onto the highway, still in nothing but her black bikini, and shot Kazumi and Chachamaru, who still stood on the roadside, a fittingly agressive stare. "I'm not doing this!" she insisted.

"You lost the janken fair and square," Kazumi reminded her, "and you'd given your word! Come on! Is this any worse than what you do in a routine basis while visiting tough bars?"

"Our sincere apologies," Chachamaru humbly bowed her head.

"What, what are you trying to imply?!" Natsuki growled. "I never walk into a bar with any intent but getting information, and I'm always covered from head to toe! I certainly never show myself off like... like this!" she gestured down to her almost bare body.

"Eh, the way those biker suits cling on you, it's not like there's much of a difference, Sempai," Asakura opined. "They look like you're just wearing bodypaint."

"They don't!" Natsuki barked.

"Think of it this way," Asakura reasoned. "The sooner you're done, the sooner you get to be back at home, to put on a burka for all we care. Now struck a pose, Sexy! And make your alma mater proud!"

"I'd rather put a sock in your mouth and-" Natsuki began mumbling while blushing and slowly striking a hitchiking pose with a thumb up.

"Booo!" Asakura hissed. "Not that way! Put more vavoom! More effort! No one's gonna stop it for that!"

"Shut up, you horrible spiky haired troll!" Natsuki yelled at her, her habitual cool aloofness shot down to hell.

"If you'll pardon my intromission, Sempai," Chachamaru humbly requested, "I have to agree with Asakura-san in that you don't seem to be putting your best effort in this endeavor."

"Gee, you think?!" Natsuki said before breathing deeply, then pushing her butt and breasts up, arching her back, and winking an eye, hair tossed back as her new pose fully accentuated her sexuality for any passerby to behold. "Okay, now how about this, wiseasses?! Happy now?!"

"That... That's wonderful!" Asakura cooed, for a moment fearing she might be going kind of gay again. "Um, now stick to it! I can see a car coming right this way! Hoo, and it's a limo, at that! We might have just hit the jackpot!"

"A... limo?" Natsuki babbled, looking that way and freezing in place, recognizing the vehicle that was, right now, stopping right before them, the back window rolling down.

Asakura made a small gasping sound as she recognized the first face peeking out the limousine with faint, disbelieving dismay, and then the abrupt loud guffaws accompanying the loud sounds of Suzushiro-sempai hysterically laughing and slapping on her own knee. Poor Kuga-sempai had begun to twitch and almost cry, trembling violently while the whole of her flesh flushed cherry red.

Kiryuin Satsuki, still out of Asakura's immediate field of view, looked back and forth between Natsuki, Shizuru and Haruka, compared their respective reactions, and slowly rubbed on her own chin, her mind already starting complicated calculations for the future of Mahora.

"What an immoral and decadent area is this," Jakuzure Nonon shook her head with bitter criticism.

* * *

 _Earth 10534103:_

Chamo, who just happened to be outside the dorm room for no particular reason, cheerfully ambled in to draw the pactio circle, humming Richard Wagner's _Wedding Chorus_ as he did, with Makie happily humming along, waving her head lightly. This did nothing for Anya's incredible discomfort with this entire situation. She was sure that Akira had to be picking up on the subtext of the ermine's 'song' even if the idiot obviously didn't, and even though all that the swimmer's expression showed was a polite interest in these activities. But if she physically stopped Chamo from doing that or anything else, by stepping on him, that would just delay everything and bring it all out into the open and that would just be awful and like a nail that was sticking out -

 _Agggggh!_ Anya finally shrieked inwardly. _I'm Russian and I grew up in Wales! Why am I acting so Japanese?!_

"All done!" Chamo announced.

Nodding, Negi took his position in the circle, bending down slightly in preparation for Anya's arrival. It was so unfair that he was going to be that much taller than she was when they were actually fifteen! Should she invest in some platform shoes to make up for it?

"Whenever you're ready, Anya," Negi helpfully informed her. Makie quickly pulled her cellphone out and readied it, eager to take the picture she'd been expecting for ever since the topic had been brought up. This hardly made Anya any more willing to actually undertake the task, understandably.

Rather than wait for the thirty-second of Neverember, though, she stepped into the circle and looked up into that disturbingly handsome face. The light surrounding them seemed to surge up as he bent closer.

"Wait," she said abruptly.

"Now whaaaaaaat?" Makie whined before Akira gently hushed her.

He pulled back a bit, and his eyes met hers with a question hanging between them.

"This... this isn't just for me," she said, searching desperately for words in her head. "This is also for Nekane-san."

"It is?" Negi asked dubiously.

"Yes! And the Magus! And Donet! And all our classmates!" she continued, somewhat wildly. "It's a promise, you see! A promise that you won't just spend your whole life over here, or over there, but that sometimes you'll come back to the place where you grew up and learned and were a complete dumbass oh so much of the time! That's what this kiss means!" she concluded.

"Does that mean you want to do it with all of them too?" Makie asked, intrigued. "Because Nekane-san is so very pretty..."

"... I'm not all that keen on kissing you on behalf of all of our classmates, Anya. Some of them were very unpleasant people, on the whole," Negi confessed.

"Negiiiii!" Anya cried.

"I'm just saying, under no circumstances do I want to ever think of Klarion as I am kissing anyone, wouldn't you agree?" Negi asked.

Anya paused, pondered that, and frowned. "Very well. I can't possibly discuss that. But-!"

"But I'm happy to kiss you on behalf of Anya, who was always there for me whenever I needed a dear friend," he added, smiling warmly. And then he bent down and pressed her lips to hers.

There had been a few moments in all of this where Anya had entertained the notion of using all her power to turn the kiss around and somehow make Negi into her ministra. Supposedly, something like that had happened when he kissed that obnoxious Class Representative person, and since Anya actually had magic instead of just being a complete nutbar, it should work for her, too. She was even contemplating that in the instant before their lips touched.

It vanished like morning dew in a firestorm.

When she regained awareness, Negi was holding out a card which depicted her holding a crystal ball and smiling broadly. _Anatasia Juraevna Cocolauva_ , it proclaimed her, with the title, _Puella Flagrans_.

"Oh," she said, surprised at how warm that sight made her feel.

"Yay, yay, way to go, Anya-chan, Anya-chan!" Makie cheered, while Akira clapped softly with a somewhat strained little smile. "Now let's see, how your Pactio picture turned out!" And then Makie's face soured as she checked on her phone. "Oh poo, the circle's light made it a blur! Maybe you could undo it and do it again?"

"No way, Julian!" Anya roared at her.

"Now... about the other thing," Negi said. He hesitated, murmured, "Well, let's give it one more try. Ahem. We don't have to do anything if you don't want to," he declared loudly.

For a moment, she wondered what he was talking about. Then she understood exactly what he was talking about. "I never said I didn't want to!" she snapped reflexively. Oh piss up a rope, why did I say thaaaat!

"Too much to hope for," Negi mused. "All right, then, we -"

"Yes," Akira said, from behind Anya and in her blind spot. "We." And then Anya felt a second warm body pressing against her own.

"Yes, _oui_!" Chamo cried from out of sight.

For a horrifying instant, Anya expected to feel him wrapping around her ankle or something, but then Negi cleared his throat. "Chamo-kun. Out."

"But aniki! I didn't get to see your blessed union and -"

"No, and you won't see this, either. OUT."

Chamo gave Makie a wounded look, but the gymnast only replied with a slight apologectic smile, a shrug of shoulders, and a few motions of her lips that seemed to promise something for later. Whether it was a consolation prize, a promise to talk Negi into it, or a combination of both, we probably are better off not knowing. Muttering imprecations, Chamo ambled towards the door and into Anya's line of sight. She was torn between relief at his departure and bewilderment that she was about to voluntarily with no gas involved do something that her heart wasn't remotely ready for... but she gave herself up for loved.

Makie, against Anya's expectations, just sat back, watching at Akira's actions with bewilderement. "Akira-chan! Not that I mind you doing it with Anya-chan, but then why wouldn't you do it with me too?!"

Akira blushed, looked down, and said, "... because she isn't like my little sister."

"..." Makie went. "W-Well, that's awfully sweet of you, but I still think you should-"

Then the door slammed open and crushed Chamo behind it as Zazie Rainyday entered at a run. "Negi- I need your help," she declared.

A split second later, a tall woman in a short skirt and revealing blouse walked in after in talking before Negi could pronounce a first syllable. Her skin was as dark as Zazie's and her hair was just as silver, but much longer and wavier, and her eyes were green instead of golden. Besides, instead of tear-like markings on her face, she had little silver triangles on her forehead and cheeks. "Now what's that 'I' business all about? She's my sister too, you know ... Oh. Um, hello there. You must be Negi, and you girls must be... well, whatever," she casually waved a hand for the perplexed youngsters. "I'm Urd, Zazie and Poyo's half sister. I'm terribly sorry to interrupt something that obviously was going to be just great, but ... hm, Zazie, maybe we could let them do a quickie before -?"

"NO," Zazie bluntly replied.

* * *

The sound of the door slamming its way open - after it had just been repaired only a few hours ago, too! - roused Asuna out of her self-absorption as the other noises coming from the dorm room hadn't, and she decided the time had come to get out of the shower. She shut it off, stepped out of the stall and dried herself off, wrapping herself in one towel and her hair in another, before heading out.

"What's shaking?" she asked, in the moment before she saw Zazie standing by the door with an annoyed look on her face and a mature gorgeous woman Asuna was sure she should know already heading over to raid their fridge, while Anya seemed to be trying to reach Zazie and claw at her with her fingers, held back from doing so by Negi with difficulty. "... perhaps I should have asked, what did I miss?"

"Agh. Welcome back, Asuna, I'm glad you're done, agh, sulking," Negi replied when Anya stopped shouting imprecations in Russian for a moment.

"I wasn't sulking," Asuna corrected. "Anyway, who's that strangely familiar woman who is-"

With the exception of Akira, everyone in the room paused to give her a dubious look. Even Makie.

"I wasn't," she insisted. "I just felt like showering for a few hours for... no particular reason. Ahem. Zazie-san, what brings you and whoever that woman is here?" she asked, imitating the subject-changing method Setsuna had demonstrated for her once.

"For fuck's sake!" the woman's voice said from within the fridge. "You kids think you're old enough already to have sex parties all day long, but not enough as to have any drinks but soda and milk?!"

"That's our older sister, Urd. I trust you already have seen why we wouldn't talk about her frequently. In any case, we have a problem," reported Zazie. "A serious problem. But perhaps rather than dealing with this problem we should focus on the futile attempts of this young hoyden to do me harm."

"You think so?" Akira asked.

"No," Zazie replied in a tone unchanged from her earlier report.

 _ **"вы просто позвоните мне разбитная?"**_ Anya demanded.

Asuna sighed, walked over to where Anya was standing and fingerflicked the younger girl in the middle of the forehead. "Sit down, all right?" she said to Anya, who'd just fallen silent.

Anya, eyes swirly, did not resist as Negi gently led her over to the couch. "All right, so what's the matter?" he asked. "And is the name Urd related in any way to the myth of-"

"Shortly after the World Tree was restored to health, I attempted to contact Poyo to inform her of that development," Zazie interrupted. "I was unable to do so through any of the direct communication links, nor through indirect channels. She has apparently disappeared."

"That's terrible," Akira gasped. "You must be so worried!"

Zazie blinked. "Yes," she said, sounding oddly surprised. "Somewhat to my surprise, I am worried. That is not the reason that I bring this to your attention, Negi. My people are not - normally - motivated by such sentimental notions, and there is a concrete reason for me to alert you to this."

Asuna went pale. "Oh, no. Don't tell me -"

"Correct, Your Highness," Zazie said, nodding as to a peer. "If my sister disappears for too long, she will be declared dead and, as her heir, I will be expected to take over her duties... and let those I have held to this point, such as maintaining my circus and supporting Negi's time travel project, slip into the hands of others. Others who have no reason to devote themselves to the latter project, as I have."

"Wait, if she's your sister as well, then let her take over that, okay?!" a now mostly recovered Anya pointed at Urd. "I mean, obviously she's the eldest of you, so why wasn't she the heir in the first place?!"

"I'm half-goddess," Urd apathetically said, dragging her feet back to plop down on the couch with an open bottle of Soder Cola. "And not that much older! And I'm stuck on Earth for the time being, anyway. Even if I weren't, my loyalties lie with my Father. Like Hell, pun intended, the demons would ever accept me as their princess."

"Even though Mother would love to have you back," Zazie observed.

"And that's my main reason for NEVER taking that spot!" Urd growled, then took a first big chug of the soft drink, all the while darkly muttering to herself. Readers who aren't of divine origins are advised to not attempt this at home.

"... we need to find your sister," Negi said after a moment.

"Yeah, definitely," Asuna agreed. "Okay, we're first going to have to figure out how we're going to get to Venus."

"The demon world is Venus?" Negi asked, surprised.

"... you didn't already know that?" she replied, then glanced back at Zazie. "You didn't mention it?"

"It did not seem pertinent," Zazie answered with a shrug.

"Well, where did you think it was, some huge cave inside the Earth or something?" Asuna asked Negi, spreading her hands.

"There's a precedent for that," he observed mildly.

"That's nonsense," Urd muttered after finishing her soda and setting the bottle down. How Belldandy and Skuld could get drunk on that bland colored piss she'd never understand. "I mean, even I know your 'Fantastic Four' revealed to the whole world the Earth's core was populated by prehistoric beasts and mole men and nothing else, and I only arrived to this planet a few months ago."

"In my defense, until recently I was in an academy on the Welsh mountains that cared little about the affairs of the mundane world, Urd-sama," Negi offered.

"... how are a bunch of superheroes part of the mundane world?" Makie asked, bewildered.

"This entire conversation ranks among the most disturbing that I've ever listened to," Akira declared softly.

"Not even in my Top Ten, Akira-chan," the Twilight Princess noted. "Probably not even the Top Sixteen."

"Nevertheless," Zazie steered the conversation back on topic. "Transport to my world will not be an issue - there is a small smuggler's passageway in the hills, not too far from a similar one which leads to the Magical World. Neither are much used in these days of relatively free movement between the worlds. A small party can safely pass and find themselves in relatively safe territory."

Asuna nodded. "All right, then, all we have to do is decide who's coming. Konoka and Setsuna are a given and I'm sure that Zazie why are you shaking your head?"

"Because I must correct one of your unspoken assumptions, Princess Asuna," the demon girl said quietly. "You yourself may not make this journey."

"... I'm sorry, what?"

"The white magic of Mars, which you embody, and the black magic of Venus are antithetical to each other," Zazie explained in a cold, dispassionate tone. "If you travel there, your presence will be instantly recognized by countless watchers, possibly including those who now hold my sister-"

" _Our_ sister," Urd corrected.

"-in durance vile," Zazie went on, no beat missed. "That is without even considering the political aspects of your journey there, which would be seen as an invasion to be answered with violence." She shook her head once.

"Can I ask something?" Anya finally spoke again, rubbing her forehead and frowning.

"Be brief," Zazie answered shortly, eyes not moving off Asuna's stunned face.

"Gee, thanks. Is it really so important to keep up that project thing, now that we've rescued Asuna?"

Now Zazie did take her eyes off Asuna, and glared at Anya. "What is this 'we' of whom you speak?"

Anya stubbornly held up her card. Zazie did not relent.

"Zing!" Urd chuckled, slapping herself on a knee. That little brat already was reminding her a whole lot of Skuld, after all.

"Anya," Negi interjected. "In order to prevent a time paradox, we still have to do all the research and building that will create the circumstances by which Asuna can be saved again. Besides which, whether she's motivated by sentiment or not, I cannot stand by while bad things are happening to my students, and the loss of a family member is just one such bad thing. Zazie, Urd-sama, are you sure that there's no way to hide Asuna's abilities if she travels to the Demon World?"

"I know of none such... but I must admit that my knowledge of such matters is largely theoretical," Zazie confessed. "We would perhaps be better to seek advice from-"

Urd threw her hands up. "Don't look at me! My other sisters are all goddeses, and the treaties between Heaven and Hell forbid each side from developing ways to infiltrate the other!"

Akira blinked. "There are treaties between God and the Devil?!"

"Considering they are my Father and Mother, yeah, they've found some common ground here and there, over the years," Urd shrugged. "Ask yourself, why hasn't your reality been destroyed yet in the onslaught of an all out conflict between Light and Darkness?"

"... ah," Akira said in a very small voice.

"I don't get it," Makie scratched her head. "I thought God was supposed to be that Magical Girl creator Negi-kun had to boink to-"

"Weeeeeeeell, it's complicated and let's leave it at that," Urd said as soon as the dreaded event of Makie beginning to wonder about Madoka surfaced.

"Anyway, one way or another, the fool will have to stay," Evangeline interrupted as she strolled in through the dorm doorway, Chachamaru close on her heels.

"Awww, but I wanted to go with Negi-kun!" Makie lamented. "Hi by the way, Eva-chan."

"I didn't mean you, idiot!" Evangeline snapped.

"Oh, then I *can* go! That's great!"

"I haven't said that either, and what kind of imbecile wants to see Hell anyway!?"

"Okay, we have to start locking that door!" Asuna declared.

"Bah!" declared the tiny mistress of puppets. "Do you truly imagine that locks would stop me? I am disappointed as your mentor of evil!"

"And I am wearing only a towel, so could you please knock before entering?"

"Where's all this modesty coming from all of a sudden?" a fairly bored sounding Urd wondered aloud.

"Mentor. Of. _Evil_ ," Evangeline repeated. "Ahem. In any event, no, there is no magic that would camouflage your nature as the carrier of Magic Cancel now that you've woken up to it. The best that we might be able to manage would be to revert you to childhood again, so it was concealed, and even that we could only do if you were cooperating."

"But-" Asuna started to object, while Makie began wondering how would it be having sex with Asuna in a child form.

"This is the test for you two. In the world where the girl never came back, boya, you would still have to face this challenge without her. Even when she is present, there will be times and places in this world where you will not always have your ideal choice of allies with you. How will you deal with that when it happens?" Eva asked, abruptly utterly serious.

Negi took a deep breath, and gripped Makie's hand. "With the help of those whom I do have with me," he answered.

Makie eagerly nodded beside him, breaking away from her prior wonderings.

"Good answer in theory," allowed the vampire. "We'll see how well that works out in practice. I will also lend you Chachamaru for this expedition. Well, I say that, but I doubt that I could stop her from going if I wanted to." Then Evangeline sighed, sounding weary. "And one thing more will I do for you."

Now she turned to look at Zazie. "Demon princess," she said. "How much time have you spent in the wilderlands of Hell?"

"Why aren't you asking me too?!" Urd threw her hands up. "You should know who I am!"

"We don't call it that, of course," replied Zazie. "But I will admit that I have not done much more than camp in safe regions controlled by my family."

"Seriously, it's as if I weren't even here!" Urd kept on complaining. "Granted, I wasn't in the original universe, but still!"

"I thought not," Evangeline said, then snorted. "No wonder you and the boy get along so well! Rushing off like this ..." She trailed off, shaking her head with weary amusement. When she spoke again, though, there was no humor in her tone. "I know a person who spent... a very long time as a traveler in Hell, seeking something that she never found. She would be an excellent guide for this expedition, even if the specifics of that place have likely changed since she returned to the world."

Urd was now literally getting in Evangeline's face. "Why. Do. You. Keep, Ignoring. Me. Witch," she coldly asked.

Eva just stared dispassionately into her eyes. "Are you any more familiar with the geography of your mother's domains than she is?"

Urd opened her mouth, paused, raised a finger, hummed, and then walked back to the couch, plopping down with a sour face.

"I thought so," the vampire nodded. "Then, what do you say to that, Rainyday?"

"If such is the case, I suppose that I'd welcome your friend -"

"She's not my friend," Evangeline interrupted sharply.

"But... then, will she agree?" Akira asked, confused.

"Let's find out," said Evangeline, and produced a cell phone from her dress pocket. She flipped it open and began pressing buttons. Then some more pressing buttons. And then, as she focused all of her attention and quite a bit of obvious annoyance on the phone, all of the buttons.

Eventually, Evangeline made a noise and handed the phone to Chachamaru. "Dial her number," she snapped.

Chachamaru obediently and silently did so, handing it back to her mistress when it began to ring. There was an audible click which told them all that the phone had been picked up.

"Karin," Evangeline said. "I need you."

"Oh, for Brother's sake!" Urd huffed. "Are you kidding me?!"

Makie looked at her. "Do you know that person as well?"

"Well, my big brother does, in any case. One of my big brothers, that is, the other is, well, the Morning Star-"

"Wasn't the Devil your mother?" Negi asked while Evangeline conversated with the person at the other end of the line.

"Or rather, the other Magical Girl Negi-kun had to screw with to-" Makie began.

"I already told you, complicated! Fucking complicated!" Urd replied. "All of it! Sufice to say, Big Brother used to be *the* Devil until he retired to go play the piano at his Las Vegas nightclub, after which my mother, who was *a* Devil, became *the* Devil!"

"I was about to accept your family might have standards until I heard the whole Las Vegas thing," a disgusted Chamo commented. Urd simply squished him under a foot without deigning him a look. "Seriously, even I find Las Vegas contemptable!" the ermine insisted from under her sole.

Another audible click.

"She'll be here by the end of the day," Evangeline declared.

"Wait, she barely said anything," Asuna objected. "How can you know that she'll-"

"Same reason you could know that Iinchou would agree to the plan you proposed to her when you said it was for the boya," Evangeline replied without meeting Asuna's eyes.

"Oh," Asuna said. Then, somewhat more surprised sounding, "Oh! Ohhhhhhh."

"Fascinating though these diversions into absurdly personal matters might be..." Zazie interjected calmly.

"You're being sarcastic, now, aren't you?" asked Akira.

"... correct. Ahem. Let us now return to the questions of who should accompany yourself, myself and Negi on this expedition. I believe that taking Konoka-san and Setsuna-san on this expedition would be foolish."

Negi frowned. "I'm sorry, I can't possibly agree with that. Konoka's healing abilities are critical, and it would be cruel to bring her without Setsuna-san as well, even if Setsuna-san wasn't one of our finest -"

"The White Wings," Zazie interjected firmly.

Negi stopped short.

"You named your alliance after them, in an echo of that alliance which your father established," she continued. "It was a noble choice, and I respect it. But all choices have consequences, and one of the consequences of this one is that Setsuna-san and her wings are now inextricably linked to the alliance. If she is sighted in the Demon World, those who sight her will assume that your entire army is present and react accordingly."

"Can't we just paint her wings black then?" Makie asked, she thought quite reasonably.

Zazie and Urd quietly glared at her in a way that proved they were, after all, sisters.

Makie folded her arms and pouted. "You're just jealous you didn't think of it yourselves! If it works on her hair -"

"Makie, please calm down. Anyway, wouldn't they make that same assumption about me, in any case?" Negi protested.

"No. You have been traveling on your own very often, of late," Zazie reminded him. "If a swordswoman of the God's Cry school is to be desired, however, there is another option."

Negi blanched.

"Oh, you mean the Aoyama women?" Urd asked. "Either of those sound good."

"The older one is on another trip with her husband she just won't be talked out of, and as for the other, remember the three headed guardian turtles?" Zazie asked back.

"Oh, yeah, those."

"Hell has guardian turtles?" Anya asked, bewildered.

"They aren't anywhere as bad as the guardian flamingos, but yeah, they do," Urd answered with a perfectly straight face.

"Does it have to be a woman?" Akira asked. "Why not simply bring Konoka-san's father along?"

There was silence.

Akira fidgeted uneasily. "Oh, yes, of course that wouldn't be the best of ideas right now... Sorry, I don't know what I was thinking."

"On the other hand," Zazie cautioned, "Kuznoha-sensei might at least listen to our request, and she may wish to get away from the campus which has recently seen her embarrassment by-"

"Oh," Negi gasped. "That's... yes, I'm fairly sure that won't work, she doesn't have the patience to go along with something like this, but there's yet another one here on campus. And while recruiting her will be difficult, I think we can do it," he concluded, smiling warmly.

"... where'd the confidence come from, boya?" Evangeline asked, frowning.

"I'm not sure, I just feel like I've accomplished something significant without even realizing it. Anyway, let's move on".

* * *

 **To be Continued**.

* * *

"Hey," Tsukuyomi frowned, "wasn't there supposed to be another scene with me right here?"

"I don't know what are you talking about, Yomi," the Joker piously said. "Anyway, as I was saying, the next day, Kitami Reika was-"

"You cheating bastard, you've ignored all of my scenes for this chapter!"

"Ahh! Quarty! Get her off me right now, now! I've grown very attached to that arm!"


	4. Chapter 4

It has been said that Nature Abhors a Vacuum, which was something Skuld should have known well. However, it remained a lesson she had yet to learn, in no small part because of her stubborn adherence to the cold mechanics of running reality and manipulating it instead of the more primal forces of chaos usually pushing for a more uncontrollable result.

For the Skuld of Universe 10534103, this would eventually manifest and bite her in the keister in the form of an overlooked detail concerning the departure of her sister Urd and the presence at her own side of Sasami, future avatar of Tsunami, but that is to be explained later. For the Skuld of Universe 6228161, this would plague her despite her best attempts to avoid it. While laying out the terms of her partnership to Chao Lingshen, one of the first few things Skuld had made clear was Chao wouldn't be giving Negi a Cassiopeia this time. It would end up resulting in a chain of events that would unravel Chao's whole plan, Skuld argued, and Skuld wouldn't waste efforts and resources in a scheme that sowed the seeds of its own undoing. Chao had strongly argued against that at first, claiming those events were surmountable and yet necessary for Negi's future development, but Skuld had been adamant, and since Chao was literally running short on time this, well, time, and depended on Skuld's expertise now that Satomi was not an option, she had relented, hoping to develop an alternate way to increase Negi's development along the line, which she still thought doable.

And yet, Nature Abhorring a Vacuum as it did, the cosmic fabric had found a way around it, in the form of an undetectable traveler from another future, who had given Negi a Cassiopeia of his own. A stranger wearing the familiar cloak and face of Nagi Springfield the Thousand Master.

A man Negi had been dreaming about before waking up in the infirmary of Mahora early into the first day of the Festival. He sighed while sitting up on the bed of lithe white sheets Ako had provided when Chisame pulled him into Izumi's alcohol-scented domains shortly after the visit to the haunted house. "How long have I been out?" he asked Chisame, who sat by his bedside, along Ako, with Matoi naturally standing shortly behind the Hasegawa girl, her presence adding a lingering slightly foreboding feeling to the proceedings, in a way Negi had not felt from her for a while now.

"Relax, you won't miss anything, and if you do, they have to learn you're only human, you know?" Chisame told him. "After all you've been through in a quick succession, with the Count and the Einzbern girl and-"

Negi sighed again, reaching for the jacket he had hang up nearby and pulling it on himself. "That's not the fault of anyone with whom I've made a commitment, Chisame. We're still on time for Murakami-san's play, aren't we? I should get-" He froze as the golden watch slipped out of the jacket's inside pocket and rolled across the floor, stopping after a couple of seconds with a beautiful, little clanging sound.

He tried to reach down for it, but Chisame, somehow, was faster and picked it up. "And now what's this? I don't remember ever seeing it before."

"Ah, ah, it's a family heirloom, Chisame, could you please give it back?" he gasped, making Chisame eye him suspiciously.

"Oh, it's so cute!" Ako cooed, walking closer to study it carefully.

"Cute? How can a watch be 'cute'?" Chisame asked. Definitely, this girl had spent too much of her life near Makie.

"Well, it's so very well crafted," Ako said, carefully picking it up from Chisame's hands, to hold it closer to herself to Negi's growing discomfort. "And the design is so lovely, I can see why... Oh! Negi-sensei!" she said, noticing the time on the watch. "I think it's off by half a hour!"

And since time worked slightly differently in the universe the watch's original owner had come from, being arranged in a different timeline than that of this universe's, this slight miscalculation couldn't be helped.

And what happens when minor details are overlooked, even out of an unavoidable need? Negi and his students were about to find out what can come from a miscalculation.

"What?!" Negi gasped. "Oh my, I calculated my whole schedule based on it! Let me take a look at it, please, Ako-san," he begged, almost yanking it off her hands and fumbling nervously with it, "Murakami-san will never forgive me if-!"

Then the whole room seemed to warp around Negi, Chisame, Ako and Matoi. It only lasted a moment, but they all felt it, and when it was over, they were left with a slightly nauseous sensation, Ako actually rubbing her belly with a small cringe. "What was that about?" she wondered. "It felt like... I don't even know how to say it!"

"Me neither," Chisame admitted before squinting dangerously at Negi. "What have you done this time, Sensei?"

"Me?!" the boy gasped. "I haven't done anything at all! Anyway, as you can see, it's not like anything has actually happened, I'm sure that was nothing but-"

"THIS IS IT!" the speakers began to blare all over the campus again, disturbing the infirmary's relative peace, booming everywhere. "THE 78TH ANNUAL MAHORA FESTIVAL STARTS NOW!"

"Geez," Chisame grumbled, "did they leave the same freaking record on again? The Vice Prez's going to have someone's head over this..."

But then the same familiar series of fireworks explosions they all had witnessed a couple hours ago began once more, in the exact same sequence still fresh in their minds, lighting the Mahora skyline and clearly visible from the infirmary's wide window, making Chisame's annoyed speech to simply trail off her wide open mouth.

Negi's was just as open, and Ako's jaw slowly came open and closed in a regular pattern, her eyes reduced to solid black dots.

"Ah," Matoi said, stoically. "There's only one rational explanation for this. Negi-sama's magical watch has just made us travel back in time."

A beat.

"I suppose it's because he's not old enough as to drive a DeLorean yet," Matoi added just as calmly.

* * *

 **Further Side Conquests of an Accidental Stud Monkey.**

 **Chapter Three.**

 **Hell of a Time.**

* * *

Based on the original works by Akamatsu Ken, Darkenning, and many others.

Proofreading, plotting inspiration, lots of moral support, and a toy monkey playing cymbals by Darkenning.

No toy monkey playing cymbals was hurt in the making of this chapter. A few fairy ermines might have been, however.

* * *

 _Earth 10534103:_

Very early the next morning, Kitami Reika was visited by that Arts teacher who had taken an interest in her as soon as Kitami had arrived, Takashiro Hiroko-sensei. And it was not that Reika disliked the confident, soft spoken redhaired woman, but there still was something about her that put Reika at unease, despite her kind behavior and friendly manners.

So Hiroko-sensei's statement that morning was actually met with a certain somewhat self-embarassing amount of relief on Reika's part. Which Reika found unsettling on its own right since the woman had never done anything bad to her. At least, that was what she believed.

"I've just received an invitation to accompany Negi-sensei and others in an important errand," Hiroko said sitting across Reika's breakfast table, "and so I'm afraid I won't be able to counsel you over the next few days, Kitami-kun. My apologies."

"Oh," the blonde said quietly. In all honesty, she wasn't fully sure what that alleged counseling was about. So far, it had consisted of Takashiro coming to her quarters, asking her a lot of seemingly unconnected, pointless questions about her pasts and memories, and then comparing them to Reika's answers to even more questions about her current situation, and how she was feeling at Mahora right now. Which Reika found silly, since they should be the ones answering her questions, not the other way around. So far, they hadn't even answered her queries about her parents, or allowed her communication with them, which Reika was fairly sure was illegal.

Kitami was not stupid, and the huge gap in her memories, combined with the fact that it seemed to be twelve years after the last day she could remember, gave her a good idea about her parents' current status. Despite of the faculty's claims they were abroad at the moment and couldn't be contacted, Reika found herself dreadfully aware that they might be dead by now, and somehow, Hiroko's subtle and subdued reactions whenever she brought the topic up further developed her suspicions on the matter. Worst of it all, however, was the fact Reika couldn't find herself caring as much as she thought she should.

Right now, instead, she felt more curiosity about the task Sensei was about to undertake. "Negi-sensei… that is the boy who was supposed to have given me this, right?" she asked, holding up the card the staff had allowed her to keep after a lot of secretive discussions, on the hope it could jolt her memories back and unravel the puzzle.

Hiroko nodded. "Hopefully, we will be able to talk with him after we are back, just the three of us, so he can explain his relation to you personally. I once again must thank you for your patience, Kitami-kun. While I am gone, Takahata-sensei will take over your counseling. Trust and obey him as much as you have with me, please."

The girl nodded with a thoughtful expression, saying nothing.

"And one more thing," Hiroko added. "I know this may sound like asking too much of you, but please try to stay away from one person named Saeki Kaori."

"Who?" Reika asked.

"A fellow student around your age," Hiroko said. "A very beautiful and charismatic young lady, with a marked interest on the occult and… unusual. We have good reasons to believe she is highly interested on your case, but we doubt the sincerity of her alleged good intentions."

"I see," Reika nodded. "Is she a troublemaker?"

"Not in any way we have been able to prove, which is why she remains here," Takashiro smiled sadly. "She has been in the company of an … unsavory individual of nefarious influence, but fortunately, that so-called benefactor left shortly before— What is so funny?" she asked, perplexed.

"Sorry, sorry!" Kitami chuckled bashfully into a fist. "It's just… 'unsavory individual of nefarious influence'! Sounds like something pulled out of a movie, no offense."

Hiroko smiled. "I guess, when you've spent this long in this business, you develop a taste for the dramatic."

"Again, I'm sorry…" Kitami's chuckle deflated into a sigh, and then she looked into the older woman's eyes. "How long will you take, Sensei?"

"That, sadly, I can't say, Kitami-kun," she shook her head. "We aren't sure at all ourselves. But we will back, that much I swear. I won't let you down."

Not this time, at least, she inwardly promised.

A tiny part of Kitami, however, felt somewhat instinctively repulsed by this reassurance, as if actively trying to reject it on every level.

To her credit, Reika tried her best to just ignore that subtle, insidious, insistent feeling completely.

* * *

While starting this episode, we said nature abhored a vacuum. In addition to that, we must now state that, as a counterpart of sorts to that hatred, nature loves symmetry and regular patterns to adhere and follow.

Even miracles, which by their own nature are ruptures of the natural order, can be assimilated into their own patterns, and nature will try to adapt around them until they either stop happening or become the norm- at which point they will stop being miracles.

And given the two universes our tale deals with were at the time passing through a stage where they tended to mirror each other, it was just reasonable to assume even their miracles would tend to overlap.

Some would have said it was a miracle for Yuuki Nao to ever attend church, but the truth was, she actually rather liked churches. Not because she had any faith left anymore. When she had started visiting the Mahora Mary Magdalene Church, shortly after the brutal assault on her mother, she had prayed with faith, looking for the relief Buddishm and Shinto had denied her. When she felt that faith had failed her as well, however, she had stuck around, even if erratically, simply because she actually liked the iconography and the peace of the Holy House. Nao didn't like crowds; she found them obnoxious, which was why that morning she was one of two souls in Mahora to hang around the church instead of joining the festivities. Also, she'd found out that this was a place where she could set dates over her phone without Mikan nagging her or Rito preaching at her about morality.

Rito. Who had a girlfriend like the crazy skank now. What a joke.

Often, Nao toyed with the idea of becoming a nun after finishing her studies, so she'd have a steady income and home without really having to work, much less to ever marry a man. She more or less understood, however, a nun still had to work more than it was apparent at first sight, which was why she hadn't decided on the subject yet. As it was, right now, the young redhead would simply sit in silence under the shadow of a wide tree close to the temple's entrance, enjoying life as the God she didn't believe in had intended it, checking on her text messages and-

The ground shook with the sound of the impact. Nao, who was as lazy as they came but also had sharp survival instincts, lifted her head and stared past the road leading to the church and the first line of neatly arranged bushes limiting the woods, darkened now with earth thrown up, although probably not enough as for it to be visible from campus proper. Nao doubted the Festival goers had even heard the noise over the sounds of their fireworks and their annoying music. Before she could even think about it, she was running towards the impact site.

Because, while Nao's survival instincts were sharp indeed as mentioned, her curiosity was even sharper. As was her self-confidence. She was fairly sure that, if there was something really weird to be seen there, she could take a few pics of it and sell them after bolting away, assuming there was any danger at the site. Enough extra money meant a little less effort on seducing disgusting pigs and scamming them from their money before they went too far.

She was fairly sure she heard the priest on duty at the church peeking out and then running out after her with surprising speed for a man who was normally so quiet and slow moving, but then again he was still sort of young. And not that Nao really cared either way. As long as he didn't stop her from taking juicy pics to trade, she wouldn't mind Father Kirei tagging along. He was creepy, but still less bothersome than the average man.

The source of the noise appeared to be a small impact crater in the first few stretches of woodland, surrounded by a few toppled and broken trees. There wasn't really enough time for Nao to get a good look at the crater while stopping by, as she was distracted by the sight of the girl in what could be charitably called ragged clothing walking away from it.

"Kugimiya-kun?" Nao heard the calm, smooth voice of Father Kirei coming from behind her, far closer than she'd have expected it, which made her all kinds of uncomfortable. She looked back at him over her shoulder.

"You know her?"

"A good shepherd knows all sheep in his flock," the man with the very deep eyes intoned seriously. Which as a matter of fact didn't actually answer the question, as he didn't fancy himself a good shepherd, but still sufficed the fool the girl as he'd expected. As a matter of fact, he only thought he knew the mostly bare young woman because she often would come along with Kakizaki, who was in the church's choir, out of pure vanity and desire to show her voice off rather than any piety.

The mostly naked girl noticed them, and spoke, sounding nothing like Kakizaki's classmate. "I'm sorry, what?" Not only were their voices different, but this girl spoke Japanese with a faint but unfamiliar accent. Other differences in their appearances became apparent at second and later glances.

"Please forgive me," the man who fathomed himself unforgivable amicably said, walking closer under Nao's suspicious glare. "For a moment, I mistook you for a young lady I happen to know. May I ask if you are you all right?" he asked.

"Never mind, she obviously is," Nao muttered rather disrespectfully. "What I want to know is, did you do that?" she demanded, pointing at the crater.

The girl looked back at the crater, paused for several moments as if attempting to decipher something that puzzled her in a quite profound level, then looked back to Nao with a bland expression. "You could say that. And yes, as you can see, I am quite all right."

"Quite," Kirei stoically agreed, for while his heart could find solace in nothing but evil now, and that included a lack of interest in sex per se, he was still a man and not one prone to outright denial of reality.

"Yeah, well, except for your clothes," Nao replied, genuinely upset by this girl's 'no big deal' attitude. She still held to some standards, actually more than those she thought she had, and she found junkies and druggies to be disgusting. And who else would walk around a church naked during a festival while sporting no expression?

Now the girl looked down. "Indeed," she said, considering her rent garment. "It would seem the miracle- whatever it was- did not preserve them."

"Then, come, poor lost child. The House of the Lord will supply you some spare robes," Kirei offered, magnanimously beckoning towards the church.

The girl's head snapped up, and there was something very strange in her eyes. "That's very generous... we haven't even been introduced."

"'For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me.'" Kirei quoted, repeating his beckoning gesture.

Then the stranger failed to outright answer, seemimg to study Kirei's own expression or lack thereof carefully, while Nao frowned and glanced back and forth between them. If Nao had been asked then, she might have said it looked to her like that girl would normally have gladly outright accepted the words she had just heard, but that there was something about the priest that kept her from doing so instantly. But when she finally spoke, taking a step towards them, her voice was still soft and somehow fragile. "'And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.' The very least," she concluded. "My name is Karin."

"Karin what?" Nao huffed, folding her arms.

"Just Karin will do," the weirdo replied, starting to follow the impassive Father across the road.

"Oooh-kay," Nao decided to tag along, just to see what happened next. As we just said, she was quite curious. "I'm Yuuki Nao," she said on a whim. "Nice to meetcha. I guess."

"That's a nice sounding name," Karin nodded, and said nothing else. Unlike her mirror self elsewhere right then, however, her next immediate thoughts were not about killing any Negi Springfield. For that, she would have had to learn of his existence in the first place.

Still, as things stood right then, she felt all the same she would eventually have to kill someone. Right after figuring out exactly what had happened to her.

* * *

 _Earth 10534103:_

Classroom 3-F was empty, except for its resident hikikomori, crouched down in the corner and enveloped in thick blankets up to her pale neck, and its homeroom teacher, who stood with his back to her seemingly talking to thin air.

If one bothered to approach and squint enough, however, one could see the scrawny figure with drooping shoulders the even skinnier bespectacled teacher was talking to. It was a boy who, despite his age, was already balding, a complete non entity who, while silent, tended to disappear from others' sight like a mirage, and while speaking, still tended to be ignored and forgotten almost as often.

"I'm just surprised you remembered me," the boy confessed, apathetically, bony hands intertwined and resting on his protuding knees. "It's been like what, four months since the last time you paid me any attention?"

"I apologize, Usui-san," his lanky teacher said, straining himself to keep his name in mind. "There was a stain on your name in the attendance list. I honestly don't know how it got there."

The younger man made a vague gesture with a corner of his mouth, shrugging his shoulders. "Doesn't matter. My name shouldn't even be in that list in the first place. It was a mistake I was sent to this class to begin with."

Komori Kiri just sat in complete silence, looking back and forth between the teacher she loved and the classmate she barely knew despite sharing a classroom pretty much every day for the best half of a year now. Needless to say, her attention kept on drifting far more towards Itoshiki Nozomu, who now was sighing with that deep hopelessness of his. "Wiser men than me have said even mistakes have a reason to come into existence. I think they were wrong, to be honest, but then I am but an ignoramus myself."

"That's not something a teacher should be saying," Usui bitterly observed, but then changed the subject just as soon to prevent the incoming Despair Rant about to be provoked by his diss, evident from the other man's expression. "But enough of that, why did you remember me all of a sudden?"

"Ah." Itoshiki shifted into sheepish reluctance. "It was actually Negi-sensei who remembered you, Usui-san."

"Negi-sensei?" Kagero frowned. The name of Negi Springfield was everything his was not. Whenever Negi Springfield was not around, everyone wondered 'Where's Negi-sensei?' Everyone knew and loved him, even after his role in the recent shameful events all across the campus. Even his scarce detractors at least respected him or at the very least feared provoking his fist, and offending his students… no, his women. Negi Springfield had become the most popular name in all of Mahora. Kagero Usui was less than a footnote.

Itoshiki nodded slowly. "He asked for your company in an assignment."

Kagero stared, truly surprised, for no one had ever nominated or asked him out for any task that was any more important than dusting blackboards off. "Seriously, he did? Why?"

"He said he had a need for your special talents."

"Which talents? I don't have any!" the boy argued, realizing the whole thing had to be a mistake. Well, that explained it, then. No wonder the miracle boy needed someone else, someone with a close enough name to Usui's own, and there had been a confusión. After it was cleared out, he'd go back into obscurity and everything would return to normalcy.

Itoshiki pushed his glasses up his nose, forcing himself to stare into the boy's face before he could forget what he was supposed to be doing there. It seemed Komori-san had already forgotten it herself, as she'd wandered off to cook something at her little portable stove, humming happily to herself. "Your unique talents of… stealth, Usui-san."

"Oh…" the balding boy breathed, in the dawn of understanding. "You mean, my talent to be invisible."

"Specifically, he mentioned he wanted you to be his ace up the sleeve in the event his main ally with that sort of power became… unavailable for some reason or another."

"You mean I'm not even his first option for the job."

"It's more like you're that other person's backup. Their contingency measure. But rest assured, it's a mission of the utmost importance. You should be honored to be a part of it, regardless."

Usui sneered. "What can be so important for Mr. I Can Do Anything Easily?"

"The future of a whole world, probably two, relies on it," Itoshiki ominously said.

Again, Kagero fell silent. "Wow," he finally said at last. "This is like, for real, no joke, right?"

Itoshiki nodded.

"Of course." Usui scratched the back of his own neck. "Nobody would bother to remember me, even to prank me. Even the worst bullies would always ignored me, and you know what, Sensei? Their ignoring always hurt more than any punch or kick. I'd do anything to catch the attentions of my peers and elders, but nothing would ever work. Even last week, when everyone was… well, jumping on each other, and even the ugliest guys got lucky, no girl would ever notice me, much less—"

"Usui-san, please," Itoshiki requested, vigorously rubbing the space between his own eyes, "I'm sorry about your pain, but please answer me quickly. I'm afraid I'm losing you."

Kagero sighed. "Right. Of course. No one cares enough about my problems anyway."

"Negi-sensei did. Enough as to remember they existed, at least."

He nodded. "And that's why I'm going," he decided. "No matter the reasons, it's still the first time anyone's had me in mind without me forcing them to remember me first. All right, Sensei. Tell Negi-sensei I'm his man!"

Itoshiki was now blinking, and staring in all directions, as if waking up from a confusing dream.

Usui grunted, reached over with a hand, and lightly slapped the adult on a cheek, forcing him to look back at him.

"I'm sorry," Itoshiki offered. "You were saying?"

* * *

 _Earth Number- You know, the Unequally Earth:_

"Well, it's a good thing that old school uniform we found fits you," Kirei said, as he served both girls sitting at his table a steaming fresh breakfast. Nao had already eaten that morning, courtesy of Mikan before she left for the Festival with Rito and Lala, but she wasn't going to complain on an extra free meal. "And I'm sure Kasuga-kun won't mind we had to sneak into her bedroom and raid through her wardrobe for it. We'll need to have to have a long conversation with her regarding those magazines, however."

"Fret not," Karin assured him, as she began to dig into her mapo tofu. "Should that transpire, this other gift will answer nicely." With that, she reached back to almost caress the shaft of the long hammer strapped to her back. It was sort of funny, Nao thought, how it and the strap had survived her… impact without a scratch on while her garments had become pretty much nothing."I would prefer to have a sword as well, but I suppose it's a bit ridiculous for a church to have a supply of those in this peaceful place and time."

"Yeah, well, about that," Nao began, then half-shrieked as her tongue felt like catching on fire with her first bite. "Ow! Ow, ow, ow, what the hell! This thing's too damn spicy!"

"Seriously?" Karin quietly asked while slowly chewing on the contents of her plate. "I think it is just plain delicious. My congratulations to the chef."

Kirei smiled while sitting down to join the meal. "Duly accepted and thanked. Also, please restrain yourself from employing that sort of language in this holy house, Yuuki-kun."

"Whatever, who eats spicy tofu for breakfast anyway?" the redhead made a face, pushing her plate towards Karin, who accepted it quickly, setting it right next to her own.

"I will not forget your charity, Father," Karin assured the man, now sounding much more respectful of him.

"I should hope not," he answered with a tranquil nod, "but if you really wish to thank me, you could start by answering the questions I'm obligated to ask you now. What are the reasons you came here, and why you do seem to need that hammer so badly?"

Now Karin did turn to look at him, a somewhat puzzled expression on her face, before taking a first sip from her cup of steaming black coffee, and finding it sublime as well. "Well, I suppose that there's no harm in telling you. Truth be told, I don't even remember why I am here, or what I was doing exactly before being sent this way. I have faint, somewhat contradictory memories of where I was before losing awareness and waking up by your church. I seem to remember an all consuming white light, and I remember a betrayal."

"Curious and curiouser," Kirei hummed, eyes closed as he enjoyed his mapo tofu.

Nao tasted her coffee and cringed. "Even this is just too hot and bitter. What the hell happened to your tastebuds?"

"I do remember, however," Karin added, "everything about this hammer. It was given to me, long ago, by someone whose company I craved above all others. It was her weapon of choice for me, and as such, I cherished it, and I learned to master it even better than a sword."

"Then why would you have liked a sword better?" Nao mumbled her question.

"Because it's far easier and swifter to kill with a sword, no matter your choice of the hammer as a non lethal instrument," Karin smoothly replied.

"Oh. Right," Nao said.

"Rather interesting," Kirei nodded. "May we know the name of that person who meant so much to you? Perhaps we happen to know each other. In the course of an active life, one acquires odd connections."

Karin paused, studying him again, before deciding, Supreme Chef or not, she still didn't like him that much. "My apologies, but I'd rather keep that closer to my chest."

"Understandable, I suppose," Kirei allowed. "We all have our little necessary mysteries and secrets. Well, I should be going to wash these plates and cups," he said while standing up and picking the silverware. "And after that, writing a detailed report of these fascinating events. Although I highly doubt anyone will look at them until the Festival is over. Still, paperwork is one of the most sacred parts of our duties and just cannot be overlooked."

Karin perked up, just a little, from her aloof coldness. "A Festival?" she asked.

Nao grunted. "The annual Festival of Mahora, of course. Wasn't that why you were here in the first place?"

"Mahora," Karin said carefully. "So I am at Mahora. And I… I think I remember a Festival of sorts, from shortly before I lost consciousness. A Babylon of festivities with visitors from across the world, with lots of individuals being stripped bare…"

"So you were doing hard drugs with your friends at some orgy while getting ready for the Festival," Nao deduced apathetically. "See? We're making progress now. Just wait a few hours until the drugs have fully passed by and I'm sure you'll remember everything."

"Perhaps," Kirei thoughtfully said. "In the meanwhile, why don't you be a good Christian and show Karin-san the surroundings while I write my report, Yuuki-kun? That might jolt her memories back."

"I'm not a Christian," Nao reminded him. "And shouldn't you be retaining her here until you've figured her deal out? Are you sure it's wise to send an innocent young student away with an amnesic drug whore?"

"I'm not on drugs," Karin said.

"The House of the Lord is not a prison, Yuuki-kun," Kirei said from where he was diligently washing the dishes now. "But if you don't wish to show Karin-san around, that's only for you to decide."

Nao frowned, looked at the man's wide back, then looked at Karin, who just sat there with a stoic silence and lack of expression. "Like hell I'm scared of you, junkie," she said, standing up and gesturing for her to come along. "Let's go, I'll show you how to have a real good time."

Karin simply nodded and followed her outside.

After they were gone, Kirei calmly finished the dishes, closed the front gates, and slowly walked back towards the Chapel. As he stood before the Christ on his cross, with his arms folded behind his back, there was a hiss in the air, and his Servant materialized shortly behind him.

"That wassssssss one of the bigesssssst sssssssinssss, a ccccchallenge to deathhhhh, the arrival of a criminal like none elssssssse…" The skeletal Judge hovered around Kotomine, long tongue snaking out of his bony jaw and twisting with each dragged word. "An immortal, I can sssssssee, sssssomeone who'ssssss dared to try and essssscape the fffffffate dictated for all living beingsssss…"

"Oh, so that's what she is," Kirei pondered. "I suspected that much."

"I grow impatient, Padre!" the Judge raised his inhuman voice. "I wasssssss promisssssed a masssssacre beyond my wildesssssst imaginationsssss, and I ssssssee you doing nothhhhing but ssssstalling, hhhhholding my hhhhhhand! Are you afffffraid, jussssst like all otherssssss, Padre? Maybe I ssssshould look for a new Masssssster…"

"Maybe," another voice said from the shadows at the other end of the chapel, "he would trust you if you hadn't given such a poor showing against Saber, mongrel."

The Judge hissed as he twirled to float behind Kirei, staring at the newly arrived man with evident poison and vitriol behind the visor of his helmet, which covered all of his face but the skull-like jawline. Kirei smiled as he turned around, facing the blond man who now strolled confidently towards him.

"Welcome back, Gilgamesh," he greeted the closest thing he had to a friend. "It's good to see you again. So. Any ideas on the identity of our young visitor?"

"None that I have bothered to examine, but what's the point of doing so?" the man, handsome beyond all imaginations, a perfectly sculpted Adonis with a cruel lingering smile, wearing a casual biking outfit, stood as a male model posing with his practice sword, the one he used while bored and going on trips, challenging the monsters of this era and seeing how long it took him to defeat them with only the crudest weaponry at hand. "She's not the woman I'm here for."

* * *

 _Side Conquests Earth:_

"So that's the situation," Negi concluded, making his last marks on the dry erase board he'd somehow dragged into the dorm room. "We have to travel to the Demon World, or Hell as it is colloquially known, in order to determine Poyo's circumstances and, if necessary, rescue her. Chachamaru and Zazie will be coming, as will Makie, of course."

"What about Akira?" Natsumi asked.

"She'll be staying," Negi answered. "I've already talked on the topic with her, and she's fully agreed to it."

"But she is your Permanent Partner now," Nodoka noted.

He nodded. "That's why I need her to stay."

"Oh, oh, I know that tone," Kotaro said. "It's the insane 'I have a backup plan' tone that usually ends up in things like putting Asuna to sleep for a century."

"Trust me, it's something I usually would haven't ever thought of, but... the unique implications of the situation posed by Kaname-san and Akemi-san have forced me into it," Negi sort-of-but-not-really explained. "Anyway, I hope that each of you will also agree to join this expedition, despite the danger-"

"Are you nuts?" Kotaro asked, eyes wide.

"... I'm assuming that's a rhetorical question, Kotaro-kun," Negi replied, turning to regard him curiously.

"Yeah, damn straight I'm joining!" Kotaro continued as if his question hadn't even been answered, more or less confirming its rhetorical nature. He was grinning now, fangs clearly in evidence. "I know you an' me been on the outs lately, but this makes up for everything, man! The chance to have a knock-down, drag-out, anything-goes, outright brawl with all of demon-dom on their own freaking turf? It's the best gift a guy ever gave his rival! I love you, man! In a totally utterly manly way, of course," he added quickly.

"Oboy," Urd deadpanned from where she sat at a corner with a bottle of sake. "Why am I suddenly having flashbacks of the vikings?"

"Well, um, I suppose that I should say thank you for your... utterly manly feelings, Kotaro-kun, first of all," Negi replied a bit awkwardly. "And I would certainly welcome your thanks for that opportunity, except that... well... you're really only invited for Natsumi-san's sake."

"... I'm what?" Kotaro whimpered.

"He's what?" asked Natsumi, seated beside Kotaro on the couch.

"While I'm sure that we won't be able to avoid every fight through the use of Natsumi-san's invisibility aura - and for those we can't, your skills will be critical, Kotaro-kun! - but the focus of our efforts is going to be operating with stealth, not seeking out brawls. I hope you understand."

"My god," whispered Kotaro. "It's all come true. I really am that kid who hangs around with Natsumi! Forget the badass martial artist, forget the supernatural powers, forget the gainful employment, forget the adequate lover -"

"Oh, you're much better than adequate!" Madoka helpfully informed him from where she was sitting on a throw rug with Misa. She then flinched under the death-glare of Natsumi, but managed to retort with a "What?! I'm sure you wouldn't glare that way at Saber-san, and she got even more rides than I did!"

Negi decided to ignore all of this. "Well, Natsumi-san?"

"Well, let me see," said Natsumi, considering carefully. "If I say no, will you really be in a lurch, Negi?"

"It will be difficult to replace your abilities, but I'll find a way to do so," he admitted, not wanting to go into details about how technically he already had sort of done it. "Because I'm not taking you into another crazy situation you never expected, without your permission."

"Uh-huh," she said, noncommittally. "And if I say no, will that mean that a certain someone doesn't even get to fight whichever demons we can't avoid through my invisibility?"

Kotaro had gone very pale and was staring at Natsumi, hands clutched in front of his face in a prayerful manner and whimpering some more.

"That would be right," Negi said, continuing to ignore this.

Natsumi turned to look patiently at Kotaro, who continued to silently beg. Without comment, she lifted one of her feet into her reach, pulled off her sock, and then extended the unsocked foot out parallel to the floor. Then coughed politely.

With a barely a moment's pause, Kotaro dropped to the floor and began giving her a foot massage.

"We'll do it," she said after a pleasant sigh.

"Whatta girl," Urd approved with a smile. "I can tell I'm going to like you, kid."

Natsumi gracefully nodded her way. "Thank you very much, Urd-sama."

"Ohhhkay," said Negi, continue to ignore the domination of his so-called rival on the grounds that, like Kotaro had just said, they were sort of on the outs at the moment. He turned to look at Madoka and Misa. "Everything that I just said about finding alternatives if you don't want to come applies to you as well," he said. "Especially since neither of you have ever gone into a dangerous situation voluntarily before."

"You've never been to our training camps," Misa told him wryly.

"True dat," agreed Madoka. "But Negi, why us in particular?"

"Essentially, the two of you are going to be taking the role that Konoka usually takes, in the support mage position. Misa's cheers allow her to revitalize the magical energy of those who hear them, which is going to be critical over this journey. Madoka's cheers, on the other hand, give a boost to the abilities of allies, enabling them to fight better and hopefully avoid injury that way. In combination with my own minor abilities in magical healing, your powers should allow us to fight, on those occasions when we have to, without fear of crippling injuries, just as we can when Konoka is watching over us. Probably," he added.

"Probably," Misa and Madoka chorused, exchanging glances.

"I will do what I can to find alternatives, and we don't have to do anything if you don't - oh, good grief, now I'm saying it even when it doesn't make any sense," Negi groaned.

"Actually, in a way, it still makes sense in this context as well, doesn't it?" Takashiro-sensei asked.

"We'll do it," Misa rushed to reassure him. "It gets us out of class, lets us have a little action, wild romance on alien planets, what's not to like?"

"Definitely," agreed Madoka, having glanced briefly at Kotaro's on-going massage of Natsumi's feet when Misa mentioned 'wild romance'. "But I do wonder why Sakurako's not coming along."

Negi explained. "While her luck augmenting powers would be incredibly helpful, and there are indications that there would be a synergistic effect if all three of you were to use your cheers at the same time, it's important to remember that she has a pact with Fate, not me. In order for her abilities to keep working -"

"She should stay here," Madoka and Misa chorused, nodding rapidly.

Negi refrained from smiling. "Mm-hm. I thought you'd say so." With that, he turned to look at the last guest in the room, seated on a cushion she'd brought from her own room.

"Please don't say that I don't have to come with you if I don't want to," said Nodoka. "You know very well that I do want to, and always will."

He felt incredibly uncomfortable as she regarded him calmly.

"Besides," she said, turning to look at Zazie. "I think everyone in the class owes you a debt for your help during the sports festival. This is the least I can do, considering."

"... what help was that?" Negi asked, suddenly suspicious.

"It's useless to dwell on the past," Zazie said placidly.

"Za-"

"Besides, almost all the girls in the class were united in that. Why would I have chosen to be different?" she asked, spreading her hands and looking innocently at the ceiling.

"Just like a sister of mine, from either side, all right," Urd observed with a couple of nods.

Negi let out an annoyed sigh.

"I _do_ wonder why Yue isn't part of this expedition," Nodoka interjected to change the subject.

"Two reasons," he told her.

"One of which being that any information she might have about the demon world in her book is already known to us," Zazie informed her gently. "In years to come, I suspect that will not be true, that she will learn more about it than I can imagine knowing, but for right now, I am her equal if not her superior in this area, and Takashiro-sensei is even more knowledgeable on the subject than I am."

Kotaro looked up at the well dressed redhead. "No joke? You know more on demons than a demon princess herself?"

"I've researched extensively on demonology and the occult ever since my teenage years, Inugami-kun," Takashiro Hiroko replied with extreme seriousness. "Out of all those who work or study at Mahora, the only one I'd refer to as my superior on that field would be the... currently unavailable Kitami Reika."

"Oh," Kotaro quietly said.

"Resume," Natsumi said sharply, and Kotaro resumed the foot massage.

Negi spoke again next. "I suppose Anya could contact her caretaker from her days at London, Mr. Jason Blood, one of the world's leading demonologists, but we just don't have enough time as to wait for his arrival. And the other reason is... well, that has to do with the other urgent news I've received today, from the Headmaster. He's received a notice from Ariadne that they're sending a small party to inspect the World Tree and confirm that all is well with it. It wasn't framed as a request to do that, either. They are coming, and matters being what they are -"

"Yue's team is coming to visit," Nodoka finished for him. "I see. She'll need to be here to greet them, and if they found out that she was gone ... they'd probably come looking for her and mess things up."

"To say the least," Negi agreed. "So. This is our army, once Master's guide arrives here, and we let Tsukuyomi-san out of her cell." Please, let it be enough. I'm risking too much already.

"What about Usui-san?" Hiroko reminded him.

"Usui-san?" Negi blinked. After a moment, he pulled a small notebook out of his breast pocket, checked on something, and chuckled bashfully. "Oh, yes, Usui Kagero-san, of course. I'm sorry."

"Usui Kagero? Who's that?" Kotaro asked, looking up.

"One of Itoshiki-sensei's students," Negi replied. "He's got an unique innate talent that might prove a valuable backup asset during an infiltration."

"One of the wacko's students, being useful for a stealth mission?" Kotaro asked dubiously. "For real?"

"I know you don't have a very high opinion about them since the incident with Kobushi-san, Kotaro, but let's give him a chance," Negi reasoned. "You'll understand when you see him... well, I hope so at least."

"RESUME," Natsumi said, and Kotaro went back to working.

"As long as we're talking about wacko behavior," Urd raised a hand, "I think there's something we should make clear before we go into this merry expedition of yours."

"The floor is yours, Urd-sama," Negi politely nodded her way.

"Gee, thanks. It's about what you guys have been doing lately. The last thing I want is for this little party of ours to crumble at the middle of Mother's domains because of your personal issues."

"Personal issues?" Natsumi asked.

"You know what I'm talking about better than anyone, kid, don't play dumb," Urd answered. "It's about all the wild sex you've been having lately, and how it has changed you, from what I understand."

"Oh, _those_ personal issues," Natsumi said.

Urd nodded. "I want a guarantee you're going to be mature enough you won't let any bad blood, previous rivalships, jealousy or private interests to cloud your judgment, interfere in your decisions, or push you into fatally wrong calls while we're on enemy grounds."

Kotaro clucked his tongue and frowned. "Almost all of the girls having their eyes on Negi during the trip to Magical World never hurt their loyalty to each other, you knew that?"

"That was before you started having sex," Urd observed.

"I don't see what one thing has to do with the other," Kotaro insisted.

"RES-ahem." Natsumi coughed as she let her massaged foot fall out of Kotaro's hand.

"That's because you're dumb," Urd bluntly told him. "Before I agree on anything, I want proof you're all okay with each other enough as to never have the slightest temptation to desert or fail each other... myself included." This last part was remarked with a subtle but telling glance to Murakami.

"I thought you said you liked me?" Natsumi asked, with a lot of aplomb, even if Negi wasn't sure it was affected or sincere. She was too much of an actress after all.

"I really do," Urd sincerely said, "but then, I tend to like a lot of people who fail me later. Remind me to tell you of a guy named Troubador someday."

Natsumi fixedly stared into the firm eyes of the goddess, and Negi couldn't help but realizing that was a marked change from how Fate's gaze still could cower his former student only a few weeks ago, when all of this had started. Then Natsumi said, just as evenly. "Okay, then. I think there's a way I can prove myself to you."

* * *

 _Unequally Earth:_

"Isn't this much better than that stupid burning mapo tofu?" Nao asked as she enjoyed her caramel apple, licking it suggestively and occasionally winking saucily at random passerbies, all the while walking along Karin, who ate her own apple much more quietly, and with far less flamboyance.

Karin couldn't say it was, since she'd never enjoyed sweet things, that much she could remember. But telling that to this young woman, who, in her own way, had been relatively helpful to her so far, seemed uncalled for. It had been Nao who had seduced the caramel apples away from two visiting students from CLAMP Gakuen before leaving them with a false phone number and a hollow promise of meeting later. At no time had she pressed Karin to join her in the numerous acts of petty thievery and trickery she'd performed through the morning to get snack after snack, booth prize after booth prize. It was fairly obvious the young lady was rather experienced at these sorts of... stunts.

The crowd was as colorful and noisy as that in the latest Festival Karin vaguely remembered attending, although Karin seemed to remember those Festival grounds were even larger than these were. Not that these were small by any measure of the imagination; they still were impressively massive, although Karin was not an easy person to impress.

"So," Nao asked during her latest mouthful, licking candy off her lower lip, "this bringing back any memories yet?"

Karin only could shake her head in silence.

"Bummer," Nao said, and although at first Karin thought she meant her situation, then she realized the interjection was the result of Nao getting a text message, as she was frowning while looking at her cellphone. "It's from my cousins, they want me to meet them and... someone else by some stupid theater play. Don't get me wrong, I love my baby cousin, she's an angel, but... I don't like the cheap whore who hangs out with my other cousin lately. I can't stand that bitch. Oh well," she said, turning around a corner while gesturing for Karin to follow her. "It's pointless to stall this any further. It'll make Mikan sad, and she doesn't deserve that. Besides, it's not like I'm afraid of that crazy slut or anything."

Karin was starting to guess this girl liked to just tease and use men without establishing any actual contact with them, while the other girl most likely enjoyed said contact, and that was the motive of the ill will between them. She didn't doubt Nao had no fear of the other girl as such, but she was fairly sure by now she, to some degree or another, feared what she stood for. Of course, that was a trivial matter as well. After all, Karin didn't enjoy the company of such people either. She couldn't say she had found a kindred spirit in Nao, but she at least could understand her position.

"I'll give you this, you're a damn good listener," Nao was telling her now, waving the stick that was the only part that remained of her caramel apple by then. "Everyone, even Mikan, just keeps babbling at me to clean my act and all that crap, like they knew better. The fuck they do! I tell you, if I had a yen for every time I run into some idiot who told me to -"

"Look out," Karin passively warned a second before the freckled, petite girl in a patched up dress who was running into their direction while stupidly closing her eyes ran directly into the redhead, and both of them stumbled into a heap at the middle of the street.

"Damn, what's your problem, you idiot?!" Nao snapped venomously, pulling back from the even smaller girl, who was sniffling and rubbing the wet corners of her eyes off. "Who do you think you are, the owner of the damn place?!"

"I... I'm Acorn Number Three..." the pitiful looking girl with messy brown hair sobbed, on her knees and hands on the dirt, ignoring the curious looks of the passers-by who had to walk around her.

"Oh great, another druggy. These things really have gone down the drain," Nao deadpanned.

Rubbing her runny nose, the new weirdo explained, "I should stop fooling myself, I've never been good for anything but bit roles. I'll never be the star of my own story!"

"Ohhh-kay," Nao frowned, while Karin walked past her and, before the freckled girl even realized her presence, had already pulled her back to her feet, strong but gentle, and then dusted the emotional wreck's shoulders off.

"You just mentioned some stupid theater play, didn't you?" she asked Nao, without actually looking at her.

Nao blinked. "Oh! Yeah, I get what you're saying!" She looked up and down at the other girl's costume, and at the direction she had been coming from. "Well, just look at that. Someone decided not to break a leg after all?"

"How depressing. Even anyone just passing by knows it's going to stink," the freckled girl drooped miserably. "I suppose the rumor ran fast, that after Sempai would be unavailable, then-"

"I see," Karin said. "You were a secondary actress for your troupe, and recently, the lead actress for your performance became unavailable for some reason. You were selected as a replacement, even though you had no faith in yourself from the start. But you were reluctant to ... betray ... the trust they placed in you, until today, faced with defeat on the stage, you couldn't take it anymore and decided to escape."

The pathetic girl blinked several times at Karin, then replied meekly, "Are you a detective?"

"I have been around for a while, that's all," Karin non-commitally answered. "And while I have no proof of your acting skills one way or another, had your troupe, who should know you well, not had any faith on your skills, they wouldn't have chosen you in the first place. Don't you think your absence will disappoint them far more than your performance would?"

Nao sighed. "Druggies must stand together, I guess."

The freckled girl blushed, like a freaking lot, and then lowered her gaze in shame. "Y-You're right, of course. Sorry, I've been a fool. It's just, well, maybe I could do it in any other instance, but the boy I like is going to be watching, and, and-"

"Oh, of course this would be about a man," Nao huffed, looking aside.

"I said a boy, not a man, and, um-"

Then Nao's eyes creepily shifted around to land back on the girl. "Oh, fuck's sake. Don't tell me you're another one of _those_."

"Ah?" Freckles gulped, eyes shrinking.

"A _boy_! Not a _man_! When someone in Mahora says that, while being all lovey-lovey, and I can tell you're a Mahora girl, because you are too much of a wimp to be from Honnouji and not snotty enough as to be from Ohtori-"

"Well, I'd never-!" a nearby girl in an Ohtori uniform raised her nose at them while walking past.

"You stay out of this, Miss Prissy!" Nao snapped, then kept on shouting a storm at the terrified girl, "When a girl in Mahora starts that crap, we know who are they talking about, right? Right?!"

"I know Negi-sensei is too popular, that's why I know I'd never stand a chance!" Freckles blabbered, about to break down. "I've come to accept that, but I couldn't stand looking bad before him and then everybody else too!"

"I see," Karin contemplatively said, before simply picking the girl up, grabbing her around her waist, tossing her over her shoulder, and then marching down the street while carrying her, all to Nao's suddenly bug-eyed surprise. "Then the solution is easy. You only have to look good. Which you'll never do by running away while crying."

After all, she'd once been someone who ran away in tears after letting the person she loved the most down, and then she took the ultimate escape exit over not wanting to confront her own faults.

No matter what, she wouldn't let this girl do anything even remotely the same.

Nao already was following them. "You lift weights, or is this a lingering aftereffect of the drugs? It's that Titan shit from America, right? I've watched the news."

"I don't do drugs, Yuuki-san!"

* * *

 _Side Conquests Earth:_

"Show me, then," Urd challenged, and Natsumi nodded with an even, apparently confident tranquility. The young actress then stood up and walked towards Madoka.

"Kugimiya," she said, stopping right before her.

"Uh ..." Madoka said, noticing Misa had just sort of shifted back a little bit, although still keeping herself close, and attentive at Natsumi's body language. "Yes?"

Natsumi placed her hands on Madoka's cheeks, pulled the cheerleader's face towards her own, and began sloppily kissing her mouth.

Urd raised an eyebrow. "All that proves is you aren't shy around women anymore. But far too often, people backstab each other after having sex."

Natsumi angrily muttered something back at her from the corners of her mouth, while Madoka just gave tiny pants of pleasure.

"I'd actually be far more convinced if you just sat back and let her and Dogboy have a go without your staging a scene," Urd smiled, leaning back with a faint air of amusement.

"Urd-sama, please," Negi said. "This is being counterproductive."

Natsumi pulled back, glared at Urd, and was met only with a growth of the teasing smile. "I'm a mature woman," she said.

"Sure you are, Hon. And we also know that doesn't have to mean being willing to partake in an open relationship," the goddess nodded. "That's not what anyone in their right mind would demand from a normal mature man or woman." She took a swig from her sake, then finished, "A shame, then, in this line of job there's no place for normal people."

Natsumi bristled, took a hand to her belt, and began undoing it quickly. "Okay then, Urd-sama, let's get serious with this. Because I don't like to get things started, but when they get started for me, then I sure as eggs am not going to back away until they're done!"

"That's my girl!" Kotaro cheered, holding a fist up.

"You just start fucking that woman already, Kotaro-kun," Natsumi coldly said, pulling her shirt up and trying her best not to look back at them.

Kotaro fell silent for a very long moment, and then meekly said, reaching for his bottle of age altering pills, "... okay?" All the while, Misa and Madoka were already kneeling around him, pulling his pants and underwear down.

Misa quickly stuck the small phallus into her mouth, and a moment later was rewarded when it grew to an adult size.

"Misa," Madoka said, very patiently. "I think Murakami just meant me, you know?"

"Shhe shhaid dat whoman, nnot whiff whoman," Misa tried to talk around the monster in her mouth, all the while undoing the buttons of her blouse.

Natsumi might have offered some clarification on the subject had her mouth not been covered by Urd's at the moment, the Norn's hands massaging and rubbing her panty-clad firm buttocks.

Negi sighed. "I suppose, if we're going to do this, I should summon Anya first, shouldn't I? I mean, I think she actually was looking forward to it, despite of what she tried to convey. I'd like to think I've grown more aware about those things. And if she learns I chose to, let's say waste this chance to be with her, not that I'm saying it's a waste at all to be with you..."

"Sensei," Nodoka delicately said, taking hold of a pill and pressing it against her mouth, "frankly, Anya-chan needs to learn a few lessons in either making a move from the start or having the patience to finish last."

Negi relented and swallowed the pill even as Nodoka already began to undo his pants from behind.

"Oh dear," Hiroko mused to herself as she watched all of this. "Maybe I should be discreetly leaving now? Certainly, that'd be the most sensible thing to do, now that we aren't under the influence of any spell of lust."

"You will always be under a spell of lust, Sensei," Zazie quietly reminded her while beginning to masage her breasts from behind, her touch concise and precise, her bold but calculating fingers already pressing into her blouse, sharp fingernails starting to shred on the fine cloth.

"Yes, I will," she had to admit, panting already. "But I certainly hope you'll be a better lover than the demon who cursed me with it."

"I feel fairly confident I am," Zazie simply stated, cupping the now exposed mammaries in each hand.

"And was there really a need to destroy that blouse? It cost me a month's salary!"

"You know you like being naked better," Zazie said like silk, and then nibbled sharply on her neck.

* * *

 _Unequally Earth:_

"... a children's play. For Pete's sake, it's a freaking children's play," Nao blandly said as they stopped by the backstage, where several of the usual suspects had gathered heatedly debating amongst themselves, only to pause and gasp when they saw her, Karin and the freckled girl arriving.

"Ah! Natsumi-san!" Negi Springfield, rushing over to meet them. "Are you okay? And, um, Yuuki Nao-san, right? Have a good day, too, and you as well, um, eh..."

The girl with glasses and a light brown ponytail coming to a slow halt shortly behind Negi adjusted the glasses she really didn't need and looked at Karin's face. "Kugimiya? What are you- Oh, wait, no, you aren't Kugimiya."

"What, what are you saying, Chisame-san?" Murakami Natsumi gulped while Karin lowered her to the floor carefully. "I admit there's a certain resemblance, but, Madoka-san is not the same as, um, s-sorry, I don't think I got your name, Miss..."

"Karin," the black haired girl who looked a fair lot like Madoka said, bowing for the small crowd, which included a teenage boy with short orange hair, a preadolescent girl with dark brown pineapple hair, three much taller and shapelier girls in gorgeous dresses, and, much to Nao's annoyance, the grinning, smug Haruna and giggling, airheaded Lala. "Just-"

"Yuuki Karin," Nao mumbled darkly. "A cousin of ours."

"Eh?" the pineapple haired girl blinked, surprised.

"A cousin?" the orange haired boy echoed, just as confused. "Nao, what are you saying? I don't remember-"

"Distant cousin, from my mother's side," Nao sneered.

"But, your mother's maiden name is Nanri!" the boy protested. Ignoring this altogether, Nao nonchalantly gestured towards him.

"Karin, this is Yuuki Rito, our cousin, and that's Mikan, his sister, the one I talked you about. That thing with the glasses over there is Rito's fiancee Saotome Haruna, and the one with pink hair is Lala Deviluke, his other fiancee," she added, perhaps enjoying seeing Rito's blush raise very fast. "The kid is Negi Springfield, boy teacher, and the others, well, no idea."

"Greetings, second cousin of Rito!" Lala joyfully made her way past the others like a playful, vigorous snowplow, rushing to shake Karin's hands in a way that would have rattled a lesser woman. "I had no previous idea whatsoever of your existence, but all the same I'm glad you are part of our extended family!"

"And I had no idea polygamy was still socially accepted in this time and culture, but regardless, thank you," Karin accepted the handshake. While Rito just kept on making soft choking sounds and Mikan gently patted his back, Negi approached Karin.

"No, thank you, Yuuki-san, for bringing Natsumi-san back to us. We were very worried about her."

Karin nodded slowly, looking down at him, and then at the freckled girl, who seemed to try and shrink away out of sight, obviously consumed by embarrassment. "It was nothing," the black haired beauty coolly said. "Murakami-san was only having some pre-performance anxiety, that's all."

"I'm sorry I made you all worried for me," Natsumi awkwardly said, rubbing herself up and down an arm. "I, um, I simply wanted to walk out to get some fresh air before the play, and I think I got lost in the crowd. It's incredible how much the landscape can change during a Festival, isn't it?"

Negi nodded. "Yes, I barely can recognize Mahora as it is now. Are you sure you are feeling okay, Natsumi-san? You look sort of-"

"I'm fine!" she interrupted, gesturing almost violently with her hands, forcing herself to smile. "I can do this, of course I can, it's just a Cinderella play, right? Just, just go back to your seats, Negi-sensei, Chisame-san, Paru-san, Lala-sempai, and, ah, Yuuki Family! We, we are due to start now, aren't we? Yes, we are! Ah ha ha, come along, Chizu-nee, Iinchou, Asuna-san!"

"Good luck, Natsumi!" Lala cheered for her, throwing a hand up in a vaguely militaristic salute. "Break your enemies' legs, rip their throats, and then bathe in their blood to be reborn a warrior of the stage!"

"Lala, it's 'break a leg', nothing else!" Rito cried at her as Natsumi turned into a black and white sketch of herself.

"Why to half-do things?" the woman with the strange tail Karin could see now she had turned around asked him. "A warrior of the stage like Natsumi should go all the way!"

"Lala-san, please," Mikan sighed before looking at Karin's intrigued expression, and then pointing at Lala's tail. "This is cosplay. Lala-san likes to cosplay." A beat, and then she flatly added, "Cousin Karin."

"I'm afraid I don't know what this 'cosplay' you speak of is," Karin confessed, and a moment later, added, just as flatly, "Cousin Mikan."

"Um, well, there's a contest on that later," Mikan replied as best as she could, "maybe we could take you to see it..."

"My gratitude to you as well," Karin nodded politely, and then gave a semi-curious look at Negi. "Why do I have the impression I have seen you before?"

* * *

 _Side Conquests Earth:_

Negi wasn't entirely sure how things had ended up like this. Oh, it was easy enough to pinpoint how it had started, with Urd-sama challenging Natsumi's willingness to embark herself on the mission without being betrayed by her feelings. And he supposed, seeing how Urd-sama was a Goddess of Love in addition to her duties as the Norn of the Past, he supposed it wasn't too surprising she had wanted to try sex with him after giving Natsumi a passing grade in her first, up close and personal test. He'd had no previous idea of that added facet of the Urd deity from his mythology studies, but he imagined he could chalk that up to Merdiana's sanitizing of texts intended for its junior students. As for the rest, with the way some of the girls had boasted about their encounters with him, he assumed it was fair to believe Urd-sama had wanted to verify them personally.

So he thought he was reasonably clear on how the sequence of events had begun, and the whys behind it.

Still, had things had managed to become a little confusing after that, regardless.

He was naked and flat on his back on the dorm room floor with an equally naked Urd-sama mounted firmly on his erection, pushing herself up and down using her feet, and a just as bare Nodoka sat on his face, her vulva and clitoris held tightly against his mouth.

A short distance away, Zazie and Madoka were giving Kotaro a tag-team tongue work, one licking the sides of his phallus and the other taking the head into her mouth, then switching over with much loud sloppy kissing in between, with Zazie clearly dominating in their exchange.

In another direction, Negi could vaguely see a still half-dressed Natsumi lying back on the couch with her legs held high and spread, letting out sighs and squeals of ecstasy. Takashiro-sensei seemed to have taken the baton from Urd-sama, as she was now the one holding Natsumi's legs up, while her tongue vigorously worked in her most private area, even occasionally sneaking down to lick and salivate on a certain other oriffice that Negi had personally never found all that appetizing to the taste. Even though the Master would never let him go on the subject whenever it came up.

"I don't like girls! I don't like girls, I really don't!" Natsumi cried. "Ah! Yes, lick me there!"

Well. Maybe she wasn't that different from the Master after all.

In the other direction, he could even more vaguely see Makie as unclad as the day she had been born, sitting on one of the chairs with Misa's arms coming around her waist to caress and pinch at her breasts and down below - or so he assumed, since that was well out of his line of sight. Craning his legs just a bit while gently pushing Nodoka's rear end ever so slightly with a hand, Negi saw Misa had some sort of plastic sexual toy in her right hand, which she was slowly pushing in and out of Makie, much to the gymnast's toe curled pleasure. Considering this, Negi found himself feeling unusual jealousy and anxiety, as all Makie could moan about was about how big it felt and how much it filled her. Which was ridiculous, of course; he understood, vaguely, and he didn't feel fully satisfied with a body size that was not actually his own, just an illusion, but even so, now that he would age again, he was fairly sure he would eventually reach that size himself, regardless. Besides, as Akashi-sensei would say, size was only a trivial element anyway. But he still found himself hoping that Makie would like his own current real size as well, just as much.

At least such strange thoughts no longer made his head hurt. That was nice.

"Let me," he heard Nodoka saying, begging, as she bent forward along the length of his body, reaching for Urd. "Let me."

"I haven't finished yet," the tanned goddess grunted, moving her heads in accord with Negi's thrusts.

"But I need it," Nodoka mewled, reaching down to caress on Urd's clitoris, under the light patch of silver pubic hair, to estimulate it with her pointer and middle fingers, hoping to bring herself to an earlier climax.

The warmth surrounding his hardness tightened, as Urd-sama sighed. "Yes. Yes, that's good. Keep it up."

"Wow," Misa said softly, pausing in her stimulation of Makie. "Bookstore's got some skills."

"Misa-chaaaaan, pleeeeease," the gymnast grumbled, using a hand to pull her head back down. "Don't stop now..."

The warmth seemed to be moving lower on him.

"Is he going to -" asked Madoka, giving Zazie the chance to move herself onto Kotaro's hips and impale herself on the hardness. "Rats. I thought I was supposed to be her tolerance test!" Madoka fumed, pointing at the moaning, rattling Natsumi.

Tighter, and tighter... and then a pause, before Urd-sama's lower regions squeezed him even harder than ever, and he could hear her gasping and glimpse her arching her back, tossing her glorious silver mane back, magnificent chest jutting up and giving a flawless bounce. And perhaps he also heard the words, "Fuck it!" mixed in with those noises.

He had no idea Norns could and would swear, either. Was this something also censored from his studies?

"That was good, really good," Urd-sama finally said, slowly moving aside with pearly secretion dripping from her crotch, all the while Nodoka eagerly moved down to claim her prize, beginning to rub Negi's half-flagging mast back into shape. "I thought you girls were just bluffing, but damn. Hey, Sensei," she called out to Hiroko, "How it's going on your side?"

And in the distance, there were some different sloppy kissing noises than the ones Nodoka was now placing on his pecker. Ones in a very familiar young voice, and the others in a much more mature, less cherished feminine vocal register. Occassionally intermixed with Kotaro's gruff growls and hisses of physical delight, and Zazie's ever present silence.

That was all Negi could make out of it, since he had tightly closed his eyes while Nodoka pleasured him orally, aiming for his full recovery. He only lay back and let her work, merely rubbing her scalp with a strong yet gentle hand, but doing nothing else.

"I see," sounded Urd's voice. "That's some progress, I guess."

* * *

 _Unequally Earth:_

Once again, as with the details on the fight between Berserker and Saber and Negi, we refer you to the eventual _Magic is what you want it to be_ chapter covering the beginning of Mahorafest for more on Natsumi's theater play. Suffice to say for now it was...

"Interesting," Karin commented as she, Nao, Rito, Mikan, Lala, Haruna, Negi and Chisame walked away from the small theater, Negi still looking back and cheerfully waving at the now smiling Natsumi and pleasantly sighing, obviously lovestruck Ayaka. "It seems the story of Cinderella has greatly changed since the last time it was told to me."

"Tell me about it," Lala pouted. "I still can't believe they cut out the part about the pecked-out eyes. It was my favorite!"

"It was Princess Nana's favorite as well," Lala's hairpin reminisced, with a quirky voice that sounded like an old woman also being a little girl. "Princess Momo never liked it for some reason, though."

"Did your hairpin just talk, Lala-san?" Karin casually asked while Negi and Rito suddenly choked in their saliva and Chisame only grunted and shook her head, eyes closed.

Again, Mikan kept her head cold and dove in for the save. "It's just ventriloquism, Karin-san... I mean, Cousin Karin," this was added with subtly accusing towards Nao, who ignored it as best as she could, rolling her eyes aside. "That's another of Lala-san's hobbies. Um... sorry for asking, but you know what ventriloquism is, don't you?"

"Yes, I do," the woman who couldn't possibly be a cousin of hers nodded. "It's a style of performance where a dummy is used to stage a-"

And the she came to an abrupt halt, her eyes widening, as she saw someone walking towards them across the crowd, smirking beatifically, if such a thing is possible, but also with an ominous gentle air of menace, if such an added thing is also further possible. This person was really tiny, even shorter than that strangely familiar Negi boy, and her light blond hair was very long, in a perfect combination with her delicate pale skin and her serene, confident green eyes. She was wearing a very cute white dress with a long, ornate skirt, and a fully buttoned up classical white blouse of long sleeves covered by ribbons. She also wore a wide summer hat and held a plush bunny against her flat chest, while a green haired mechanical toy in black Goth Loli, armed with a pair of huge knives that looked strikingly real, marching by her side, creaking with each clumsy step.

"Master!" Negi gasped, also coming to a sudden stop. "Hm, hello, I wasn't expecting to see you up so soon! Ah, you look just great! Very beautiful clothes! Like a dress-up doll's!"

"Hello, Evangeline," the girl named Chisame droned, clearly unhappy to see this new arrival. "It's weird seeing you here without Chachamaru. Where's she?"

"Kek kek kek," the mechanical toy with the knives that were bigger than it was cackled, head tilting aside. "Who needs the useless little sister when the cute big sis can walk by her Master's side again? I'm the greatest help Master has ever-"

And then Chachazero got a real good view of the mute, livid Kugimiya lookalike standing before them, and for the first time that Chisame could remember, the maniacal doll looked... shocked. Had she just imagined Chachazero going pale? That couldn't possibly be, could it? Regardless, Chachazero's arm was indeed trembling when she reached up for Evangeline's skirt, strongly tugging down on it. "Master, isn't this... isn't this..."

"Quiet, you," Eva pushed her aside with a foot, not focusing at all on the black haired girl and instead leaning closer to Negi, her curiosity picked by the golden chain peeking out of his breast pocket. "And what do you have there, Boya? Looks expensive for someone on a teacher's salary."

"Master!" Chachazero gasped, lying on her back in the dust and desperately struggling to pull herself back to her feet, to no avail. "You gotta listen to me, that's, that's -!"

"M-Master, this is nothing, just a trinket, ah, I won it at a raffle, didn't I, Chisame, you tell her," Negi swallowed while Evangeline reached for him, pushing his blocking hand aside, and caressing the surface of the Cassiopeia with her sharp finger nails.

"You liar, haven't I taught you it's foolish to ever try and trick me?" Eva said as she reached all the way into the pocket and pulled the watch out, making it glint preciously under the sun. Mikan, who had been about to offer another helpful bullshit explanation concerning Evangeline for Karin, and Haruna stared at it with fascination, and even Rito was fairly impressed as well. "Don't try to tell me you won this at some cheap fair booth, Boya! It's some sort of family heirloom, isn't it? Why else would you keep it, so close to your chest, on such an important day."

"Wow, Eva-chi, you're right...!" Haruna breathed out loudly. "That's gotta be worth a small fortune, Negi-kun...! Wait 'til Mom arrives, I'm sure she can tell you how much exactly!"

"It, it isn't a gift from my father or anything, sorry!" Negi surprised Eva by snatching the watch back from her hand, something he normally would never dare to do. Stuffing it back into his pocket, he grabbed Chisame's hand and rushed away through another pathway pulling her along, ignoring her protests as they disappeared into the crowd. "I'll explain it all later, right now we gotta go!"

"Negi-kun! Wait!" Haruna gasped after them. "Geez, what's wrong with that kid now? Mom wasn't going to cheat him outta it! Well, not as long as I was there to stop her from doing it, anyway!"

"The nerve of that Boya!" Evangeline bristled, fists tightening at her sides. "Who does he think he is, to deny me that... thing?! Doesn't he know, what is his is mine, and what is mine is mine?!"

Then she heard a furious, long restrained hiss coming from another nearby direction, and she gave the source of that sound a rather annoyed glare. "Oh, can it, Kugimiya. Not like you can lecture me on anything, and why aren't you with Shiina and Kakizaki anyw-"

Then Evangeline fell silent, and her eyes dilatated, her body posture shifting slightly in alarm. It was the same thing she'd done two years ago, when she first saw Kugimiya Madoka walking into Classroom 1-A, only then it had lasted little until she realized the girl's identity and no one had been looking at her at the moment, so her momentary gaffe went thankfully unnoticed. This time, however, things were clearly different in more than one sense.

"You..." Evangeline Mc Dowell, the immortal Vampire Witch, downright gulped while a trickle of sweat ran down her temple.

 _ **"You!"**_ Karin seethed venomously, like only a scorned lover can, and with a single smooth motion, she drew her mallet out and swung it directly at that person she had recognized.

* * *

 _Side Conquests Earth:_

"I knew it!" the new arrival declared as soon as she saw Negi in his still not quite dressed state, to say nothing of the equally semi-clad forms of the young women (and young man) behind him.

"Hello, you must be Karin-san," Negi said politely. "I'm sorry, but you've caught me at a somewhat awkward moment."

Whatever outraged response she was about to make out was drowned out by the sudden gasp from Misa. "Wait, Madoka?! But how can you be over there when you're over here?" she cried out, glancing from the young woman who'd just entered the room to the one who was crouched at her side, pulling a shirt on over her bra.

"That's obviously not me, Misa!" said Madoka, annoyed. "We don't even look that much alike!"

"The heck you don't! And how can I be sure she's not the real Madoka, and you're the imposter?"

Madoka just stared at her.

Karin just stared at the lot of them. "Insanity," she finally declared. "I have stumbled onto a nest of insanity. That's the only reasonable explanation. This must be your doing, Negi Springfield! You have perverted and corrupted the minds of these girls, but all that is at an end! Face judgment eternal, Negi Springfield!" She hefted up her hammer.

"Oboy, this is gonna be good," snarked Urd, who had her fair share of unpleasant experiences involving black haired angry girls wielding hammers or mallets.

"There's really been a huge misunderstanding, here," said Negi, then dodged back out of the way of the first swing. "It's actually getting bigger every moment."

"Halt, Yuuki Karin!" demanded Chachamaru as she burst in through the shattered doorway, weapons at ready. "You shall not be permitted to harm Negi Springfield!"

"Yuuki? I knew it!" Misa said. "I knew she had to be related to the Perverted Beast and his weirdo creepy cousin!"

"Are you sure we still can go around calling others 'perverted'?" Madoka doubted.

"Well, you certainly can't, impostor!"

"Seriously, cut it out already!"

"Oh, boy," muttered Kotaro, who'd gotten dressed snappily. "This is going to go south so fast."

"What nonsense is this, android?" Karin snapped, whirling so that she had a view of both Chachamaru and Negi. "You claim to be Evangeline-sama's servant, and yet you would protect her enemy?"

"Negi-sensei is not the Master's enemy," Chachamaru retorted. "He is... he is her love, just as he is mine!"

Absolute silence ensued.

"Actually," Takashiro finally said, as she finished buttoning her blouse up, "the proper term for a female, so to speak, mechanical lifeform is 'gynoid'. 'Android' is used for their male-patterned counterparts."

"Give her a break," Urd shrugged, "she's from ancient times. Although she of all people should know about the proper use of Latin roots in any language."

Slowly, Karin's gaze turned away from Chachamaru, past the irrelevancies, to regard Negi with unspeakable loathing. "Your suffering will be legendary," she promised him.

"Oh, come now, this is-" Negi started to wearily protest.

And then Makie bounced up. "Okay, that's it, Ma'am!" she said. In a single bound, she leapt in between Karin and Negi, spread her arms as wide as they could go, and stared right at Karin, tiny figurative daggers coming out of her eyes. "I don't know what your beef with Negi-kun is, but he's my love, too. If you want to hurt him, you'll have to hurt me first!"

Karin blinked. "What in God's name-"

"Bitch, don't use Dad's name in vain," Urd snorted. "Do you think we've forgiven what you did to Jay yet?"

 ** _"... Jay!?"_** Karin gave Urd a look that first was livid with outrage, then quickly went into outright alarm as she noticed the woman's facial markings. "Wait, would you be-!"

Madoka and Misa exchanged a glance, and then, as one, they got up to stand right behind Makie. "Love... is a strong word," said Madoka.

"But you're going to have to go through us, too, if you want to hurt Negi-kun, Madoka!" said Misa.

Madoka's teeth ground together audibly. "That's not me," she repeated irritably.

"So you say."

Zazie, silent as darkness, drifted in behind the two of them, gazing at Karin with a challenging look in her eyes.

Takashiro sat there in thoughtful contemplation for a moment, hummed, and then walked in to join the others, arms spreaded. "It's nothing personal to me, but I couldn't possibly live with the weight of another child's loss in my conscience. So, either try your worst or hold your hand back, whoever you are."

Karin stood there for a moment, staring at the human wall separating herself from her target, then turned to glance over her shoulder at Chachamaru and her weapon systems. With an annoyed sigh, she lowered the head of her hammer to the floor. "Insanity," she muttered.

"I can't really argue with that," said Negi, embarrassed by these developments. "But in any event, would you like to know why Evangeline-san actually asked you to come here?"

"Oh, by all means," Karin said sulkily.

* * *

 _Unequally Earth:_

"Insanity," Mikan softly mouthed to herself, at the same time Lala, Rito and Nao all shielded her with their bodies, pushing her back and away from where Evangeline was jumping back and forth, and from one side to the other, all the while dodging the angry barrage of hammer strikes from the suddenly very furious Karin.

"Alright!" a boy with a CLAMP Gakuen accent cheered, pulling his cellphone out and starting to take video of the scene. "A real Mahora street fight! Now this is what I came here for!"

Evangeline groaned and scratched herself on a side of her head while bouncing around, barely keeping herself above Karin's speed, much to the awe and whistling of the quickly growing crowd that was gathering around them, although keeping prudent distances. "I hope you're happy now, making a spectacle of yourself like this. And I see you still lose all control of your technique when you get mad. What a waste of skills!"

"Silence, treacherous fiend!" the abruptly very emotional girl shouted, charging ahead only to be avoided again. "Have you grown not only duplicitious, but cowardly with old age? You never fled from any impact, Daywalker!"

"Long story," Eva grunted before grinding back, sinking her heels on the dirt and assuming a better fighting stance. "I suppose you might find it amusing, even, if only because you'd think it was fitting. Not that you'll get a chance to hear it if you keep dumbly attacking me in the open!"

Karin fumed, then looked at the crowd taking pictures and filming them, to end up sheating her hammer back. "Yes," she reluctantly said, "it's not the best place for this, we can agree on that much."

"Filming a movie, filming a movie, folks, make way for a crew member!" Haruna pushed her way back to the middle of the event, then grabbed Eva by an arm and pulled her back, hissing into her ear. "Eva-chan, what's this?! What the heck did you ever do to Kugimin's clone?!"

"Unhand me, Saotome," Evangeline shook her hand off with disgust and proceeded to stare at the coldly bristling Karin. "Apparently, this person thinks she has reasons to believe I wronged her after an association between us. I must admit I'd never expected to see her once more."

"You screwed her that badly, huh?" Haruna asked and then bowed to Karin. "My apologies in the name of our club! Please don't hold whatever Eva-chan did against the rest of us, she can't help being evil!"

"You're taking her side already, before even knowing any facts?!" Eva protested.

"Are you steering even more people now, to guide them to their doom for your own benefit, Daywalker?" Karin accused. "Do you know no shame?"

"Oh, please stop making a scene already!" Evangeline barked, tossing her arms up. "You're always the same, no one can ever explain anything because you're always jumping to conclusions first!"

"Funny, I seem to recall I used to be completely patient, never daring to ask for any explanations from you, until YOU THREW ME INTO OUTER SPACE!" Karin shot back.

"Really out of context dramatic scene playing with surreal themes, folks," Haruna kept on trying to shoo the confused crowd away. "Why don't you wait for the movie to be out to watch it as God intended? I promise we'll have the DVD and Blu-ray out by the Sports Festival! Please go visit the cosplay show, it's guaranteed to be awesome and sexy!"

"Even if I had betrayed you, which I didn't, why are you so bothered about it?!" Eva recriminated. "After all, you barely did anything but wax angstfully about how guilty you felt and how karma would catch up to you, Little Miss Traitor!"

"It's not a matter of my being deserving what you did or not, but of your being vile enough as to betray our link of love!"

"... love?" Rito blinked.

Haruna tensed up from her crowd control duty, her ahoge twitching violently. _"Love?-!-?"_

"Ah-hah, I knew it!" Lala slammed a fist into a handpalm, thriumphantlly.

"Don't listen to this old madwoman!" Evangeline roared, stabbing the air over and over with a finger that pointed at Karin. "She's delusional, I'm telling you! And she's also obsessive, and has an appallingly one-track mind, and she's bad enough to make Tsunetsuki look stable, and-"

"Master, Chao told me I could take a couple hours for myself," Chachamaru came in, quietly marching through the tight crowd without any difficulty, and holding several booth prizes, most of them lovable dolls and plush toys, in her arms. "So I thought I'd spend them with y-"

She came to a halt as her gaze and Karin's locked on with each other, and Eva muttered miserably, slamming a hand on her own face.

"Do we know each other from anywhere else?" Chachamaru asked, just a bit less polite sounding than usual.

Karin didn't know why she felt so compelled to attack this newly arrived strange person, other than the facts she looked like Chachazero and she had addressed Evangeline in a very familiar way, but she felt it, and right now that was all that mattered. **"DIE!"** she growled, swinging the hammer rushing aside once again.

"Hey!" someone in the crowd shook a fist. "Everyone, come back! The brawl's not over yet!"

"Oh, for the love of-!" Evangeline yelled.

* * *

 _Side Conquests Earth:_

"One of these days we're going to have to replace the whole darn doorway," Asuna sighed as the three of them walked in to the suite.

"... and then, once we have secured our objective, we hope to return home safely, through the same means," Negi finished explaining as they arrived to find Karin seated on the couch and all the other members of the Negi Party Hell Edition (Negipa Hed, for short) more or less surrounding her. Chachamaru's weapons were still out. Nodoka stood right behind Karin with a glowing book hovering in front of her.

"Things seem to have worked themselves out, then, in which case I should really be -" Evangeline started to say in a nasal tone that sounded nothing like her regular voice.

Karin's head jerked in her direction. "Evangeline-sama?" she asked.

The characters for _Dammit_ hovered momentarily over Evangeline's head as she realized the futility of trying to hide behind Asuna again. "Hello, Karin. It's been quite some time, hasn't it?"

"It has been fourteen years, five months, and seven days since we last met," Karin agreed, genuflecting before her.

"Sounds about right," Evangeline mused while facepalming.

"And... the reason you called me," Karin inquired without looking up. "Is it truly the mission this... person... has described?"

"Yeah, that is the reason." Eva managed to actually look down at Karin. "What do you think of the boya's plan?"

"It is an absurdity, Evangeline-sama. It is critically deficient when it comes to identifying the parties responsible for the disappearance it is meant to investigate, and relies on the abilities of a group of magically empowered school girls and children rather than the seasoned adult warriors and mages who would stand a more reasonable chance of success." A slight pause. "If you instruct me to accompany them, I will depart whenever they are ready to do so."

"Well, goody for you," Misa interjected. "Who are you, anyway?"

"My name is Yuuki Karin," replied Yuuki Karin.

"We already know you're related to those weirdos!" the exasperated Misa said. "I meant what are you, not who are you!"

"But you said-" Hiroko began.

"Actually," Madoka interrupted with a smirk, "why do you need to ask, Misa? You already knew she was Kugimiya Madoka, didn't you?"

"Cute, Not-Madoka," Misa pouted at her. "Cute!"

"Her name is Ist Karin Haute," Nodoka corrected softly.

Asuna sounded out those syllables... and then got very wide-eyed, glancing at Urd with a raised eyebrow. Urd just nodded at her.

Karin looked at Nodoka in a decidedly unfriendly manner, then glanced at Asuna before continuing. "And I am the second- excuse me, third oldest person in this room - a rare experience - and have spent more than twelve centuries in the wilderlands of Hell. While that was some time ago, I doubt things have changed very much there."

"I won't mind if you want to pretend you're the second oldest one," Urd said. "Just to be clear on a few subjects, last time you were there, Dokuro-sama was already at her post?"

"Who?" Karin asked.

"I see. Was that before or after Baytor's stay in office?"

"Baytor? Who would ever make him a Master-"

"One of Etrigan's powerplays. You know how that guy rolls," Urd sneered, a sneer Karin shared. "You are aware of what happened with the Gremory clan, are you?"

"They were promoted, weren't they?"

"Yeah, although it's a bit more complicated than that."

"I know, but why go into details before these people? Look at them, they're so confused and we've only covered a few basic affairs..."

"Eeeeeehhhhh..." a tiny-eyed Negi babbled.

"Don't talk as if you were so well informed, you don't even remember Dokuro," Urd huffed at Karin, folding her arms.

"Oh!" Karin said. "You mean Skull, don't you? The Japanese name threw me off for a moment."

"... dammit, that's right. I've spent too long in this country," Urd admitted, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "Okay. I guess you're okay to go. Whatever."

"Ah! Master Baytor!" Makie snapped her fingers, then began laughing dumbly. "I got it, that's actually a good joke!"

Natsumi, Madoka, Misa and Kotaro all stared at her, which she blissfully missed.

* * *

 _Unequally Earth:_

"Are you sure about this, Rito?" Mikan hesitated. "You don't have to do this, you could just keep yourself out of it, we both know she isn't our-"

Her brother smiled gently at her and patted her small shoulders. "I'll be alright, Mikan-chan. I'll be with Lala and Haruna-chan, won't I? And Karin-san's calmed down enough by now, she's just going to discuss things reasonably with Evangeline-san. Just go with Nao and enjoy the Festival, we'll catch up with you soon enough!"

"Okay, if you say so, but still-"

"Let's go, Mikan," Nao sighed, pulling her little cousin along with herself, further away from the entrance to the alley. "Trust Rito, okay? Sometimes he knows what he's talking about, and I guess this is one of those times."

"Trust Rito?" Mikan asked her. "I don't think I ever heard you saying that without a 'Just don't' before it."

"Har har, guys, move along and have a great old time, you hear me?" the boy gestured for them to leave already, and although Mikan still looked wary, she let herself be guided away by Nao. As soon as they had disappeared into the crowd, Rito exhaled, walked into the small narrow alley, and allowed himself to be pulled up by Lala onto a building's conveniently deserted rooftop, where Karin, Evangeline, Chachamaru, Haruna and Chachazero sat on the edge, waiting for them. "Well? What's your deal then, Karin-san?"

Karin frowned at the two figures she still could make out into the distant crowd, and observed, "I'm glad I'm not an actual part of your family."

"Mutual," an unamused Rito nodded. "Will you please already stop stalling and explain the situation, or should Evangeline-san do it instead?"

"I don't want to talk about the topic, and you can't make me," Eva bitterly said, looking aside. "None of you can!"

Lala blinked, grabbed Chachazero by a leg, and then held her over the edge, quietly threatening to drop her several stories down onto the pavement. "Okay, I'll spill the beans!" the doll gasped, proving she wasn't that edgy when she was going against someone she couldn't overcome and was perfectly willing to let her become street pizza. "I'll talk, don't get rough! Although I like your style!"

Karin inhaled. "I don't owe you any explanations," she calmly said, "but I suppose you have the right to know, before the Daywalker does to you what she did to me. Pay attention, for your own salvation might rest within these words. I have only ever confessed my origins once. It resulted in my first meeting with the Daywalker. Perhaps a second time will change everything in my life again. Perhaps not. But at the very least, it should change yours." And then, with a deep breath, she began her tale.

* * *

I was born in Germania in the first year of the rule of Tiberius in Rome, or so I believe, for Rome was only a rumor to our people. I was not yet a woman when I began, unwillingly, the journeys that would take me away from my home forever - for my people would be destroyed in the great population shifts that came later in that century - and to the province of Judea, as a slave and later a freed woman.

Eventually, I met Him. Much like the historians, I divide my own history into the era before He came into my life, and the years afterwards. He accepted many outcasts among His friends and followers, and perhaps it should not be so strange that a foreigner, a woman, and a freed slave should number among them. Was I the disciple that He loved? I am not the one to say. I loved Him. We all did. Was I the only one who yearned for Him? I doubt it.

Did I betray Him? Yes. In the end, I did. In the end, hearing Him speak of the doom that was coming for Him made me panic and try to offer Him up to the authorities in the hope that if I did so, if He was taken peacefully, they would be merciful. I was, and perhaps am, a fool.

The worst part, I think, was the way that they wrote me out of the history altogether, and gave the Aramaic form of my name as a nickname to Judah bar Simon. For millennia, then, that poor, greedy man, whose worst crime was to steal off with our treasury when it seemed that all was truly lost, who bought a plot of land with that money and died of a seizure many years later, has been condemned as the worst traitor, the most shameful coward, in all of history. It seems hardly just.

But there is no justice in the world, I think, for why else should I be granted unending life for that act of treason and cowardice? Or so I used to think, until a more than fitting punishment came my way; a fate worse than death, that of being exiled into the maddening void by the Daywalker. However, after long, careful consideration, for only that could be done in that most vile of non places, I came to realize my first assessment of the world's unfairness had been correct. Even if I had found a fitting destiny, the Daywalker hardly had my sins in mind when she betrayed my trust. She would have gladly done the same thing to anyone else. Anyone could have readily become the scapegoat of her ambitions. As bad as I ever was, the Daywalker's crimes, I realized, far outdid even mine.

Perhaps that was why I was once so attracted to her? Maybe her darkness appealed to the worst part still within me. But that love, that devotion I once held for her, over years, no, decades and decades of faithful servitude, meant nothing to her when it was the time to sacrifice me to her mad scheme to gain the power of the entity named the Obsidian Prince for her own, in what I calculate were three hundred of your years ago now. Fortunately, from what I can see, her insane gambit failed, and some heroic soul confined her evil here. But that hero should have slain her when he had the chance! A chance I should take now, so at least some of my misdeeds might be forgiven by the Heavens!

* * *

Lala cocked her head aside. "Who is this 'Him' you speak about?"

"For real, haven't these stupid Japs taught you anything about the Bible yet?!" Chachazero screamed. "I'll teach you all about it! Sodom and Gomorrah! The Apocalypse! The Crucifixion! The Massacre of the Innocents! The Ten Plagues! All the good stuff with none of the sappy fluff, but pleeze pull me back to safetyyyyyy!"

"Oh, please, Karin," Eva snorted. "That's how you understood it? That I was trying to get the Obsidian Prince's might and add it to my own?"

"Your boasting and posturing as you sealed me away with him indicated just that, Mistress of Puppets," Karin accused.

"Well, I had a role to play, that's all, um, not like I'm not evil, of course, but still, screwing you over wasn't part of my original plan, you were just unfortunate collateral damage ..."

"Collateral damage!" an indignated Karin said. "And then, did you honor my loss as one would honor a fallen comrade one had to sacrifice for the greater good? Did you ever tell any of your alleged friends anything at all about me?"

Haruna shook her head. "Nope. Never mentioned you before us, not even once."

"She doesn't even have pictures of you in her house," Rito shared.

"She asked about my alleged friends, and you aren't my friends, alleged or otherwise!" Evangeline shouted.

"Chachamaru-chan?" Haruna asked the strangely silent gynoid. "Did she ever said anything about this girl during the time you worked for her?"

Instead of outright answering, Chachamaru gave all the booth prizes she had been holding to the surprised Rito. "Here, these are for Mikan-san, Sempai. I'm sure she will appreciate them, unlike _some other people_ would have."

"Gah!" Eva gasped. "No, wait, those are MY things!"

Karin nodded sagely. "Wise decision, automaton. As for you, Daywalker, of course you would not have any friends. You shall perish as you have lived, alone and unloved, since you could never cherish the love anyone ever gave y-"

"Questioooooon!" Lala raised a hand.

"What is it?" Karin gave her an annoyed glare.

"She's not going anywhere, is she?" Lala asked. "I mean, she outright can't leave the campus, right? So, why don't you wait until the Festival is over to make a decision about what to do with her and have fun with us first? Don't you think that's way better, and so you won't spoil the Festival's good clean fun with a funeral? I don't like funerals. They're gloomy."

"Kicking huge amounts of corpses into common graves is great fun, tho'," Chachazero piped in.

"Sometimes, maybe, but you just don't do that to friends," Lala wagged a finger at her.

Karin stared blankly at Lala, then at her former Master. "What manner of woman is this?!"

Evangeline shrugged. "I'll tell you when I have figured it out myself!"

* * *

 _Side Conquests Earth:_

"Well, great," Misa replied, less than impressed with Karin's response. "So you're not as old as someone who looks like they're younger than you. Real accomplishment, that," she continued, deliberately not looking in the direction of a certain petite vampire.

"The subtlety with which you try to avoid provoking my wrath is truly breathtaking, Kakizaki," drawled Eva.

"Is this person truly necessary for the success of the endeavor, Evangeline-sama?" Karin asked quietly, looking at Misa in much the way a bird of prey might consider a field mouse.

Before Eva could answer that, Negi smoothly interjected. "Yes," he said firmly. "And not only that, but she is one of my precious students, and Evangeline's dear classmate as well."

A noise that might have been a swallowed laugh came from Evangeline's general direction.

"Eva-san's completely right, Karin-san," Urd nodded, arms folded. "She's never had someone she could ever call her 'dear' anything."

Evangeline quickly opened her mouth to protest, but held her tongue as she immediately realized the tight spot where the Norn's commentary had left her. She couldn't argue that an evil being of darkness such as her had ever thought of someone as her 'dear', but just letting Urd get away with that critique of her moral stature was obnoxiously unflattering, as well. And the way Karin looked at her now, as if to almost wait for confirmation or denial on the subject, only made things worse. Still, Evangeline couldn't, right now, think of a good way to reframe the issue to her own advantage, and giving her a response further down the line would only make her look... slow in the draw, so to speak... so she simply turned around with a haughty, dismissive, and above all uncommitted, "Bah!"

"Such wit, I've been shown up like never before," Urd smiled, while Karin and Negi quietly glared at her, and Misa chuckled under her breath.

"Very well," said Karin, deciding to choose her fights wisely and returning to regard Misa with a hunter's eye. "In any event, I was not speaking of Evangeline-sama, but of the Princess of Parallel Mars, who is more ancient than I am by far."

"The Princess of -" Misa started to repeat, sounding confused, but broke off midway. "Oh. Asuna. That cra- um, sorry. I don't like to think about that stuff, Asuna. None of it seems really all that real to me."

"I know the feeling," Asuna wryly agreed.

"Well, this whole universe was created as a derivative byproduct of an outsider's experiment, so it might be said nothing of what transpires here is fully real, depending the perspective," Urd mused, taking her arms behind her neck. "But sorry, I'm digressing again, or not?"

"... Kakizaki, I'd hug you if you weren't a shallow nymphomaniac," Chisame told the cheerleader with utmost sincerity, since everybody tried their best to ignore that latest remark from Urd, and especially its implications.

"Hey!"

"Well, if you at least weren't shallow, I suppose none of us can complain about nymphomania any more."

"Rude, Hasegawa," Misa retorted.

"What do you mean by that?" Karin asked, eyebrows quivering.

Everyone froze.

"Oh. Her too?" the ancient girl guessed aloud after a moment of consideration. "What a depraved place. How unfortunate that that cad Nagi Springfield chose it as your prison, Evangeline-sama."

Negi bristled but kept silent as Evangeline coughed another restrained laugh. "I can't really argue with that," she said. "But it's not important right now."

"And we prefer the term 'decadent' eiher way," Hiroko politely added.

"No, that's another place," Urd shook her head. "Close, but not quite the same."

"I suppose it's trivial indeed, Evangeline-sama," Karin exhaled, feeling the slightest hints of a headache for the first time in many lifetimes. "As I was about to say after clarifying my earlier statement - Kakizaki, I think it was? - I cannot die. Neither arm nor claw nor spell can end my life. At the very least, with me as a guide, you are guaranteed that at some point, I will be able to return to this place and give an account of your likely painful demise."

"And as I said before - yay for you," Misa retorted.

The corners of Karin's mouth curved slightly. "Heh. I like you. What a pity." She turned to look at Negi, business-like once more. "When do we leave?"

"Tomorrow morning," he answered. "That should give us time to complete all the necessary preparations."

"So be it. I shall await your call at Evangeline-sama's home, which is doubtless in need of a _proper_ cleaning." This said without a glance at Chachamaru, who momentarily pointed one of her larger weapons in Karin's direction, then moved it away with a pantomime exhalation.

"Actually," Makie said, taking a finger to her own mouth, "I think the resort's floors might be still in need of a full cleanup after the orgy we all had there, right?"

Karin twitched visibly. "What."

"Oh, you lived through the classic Roman times," Urd grumbled. "Are you going to tell me you never took any advantage of the wild Caligula years, at least?"

"I was still in mourning at the time! Weren't you? What kind of sister are you supposed to be?" Karin accused her.

"Why should I have been mourning, He was already back at home! You dummy, He never wanted for you be mourning His death, but celebrating His resurrection! You've been missing on the whole point all these centuries?!"

Negi sighed, shook his head, and looked at his wristwatch. "Now, I wonder what's taking Itoshiki-sensei and Usui-san so long...? Usui-san still has to greet the rest of-"

"We've been right here for several minutes now! Sensei!" Kagero cried, suddenly manifesting himself behind Negi, much to the boy's surprise.

Itoshiki looked down at his own hands. "Oh my God, they ignored me as well! So, after all, it's CONTAGIOUS!"

"Welcome to my world, Sensei..." Tsunetsuki Matoi quietly said from right behind him.

"Ah! You were there?!"

"(Sigh). Yes, always..."

* * *

 **To be Continued**.

* * *

"You damn traitor!" Tsukuyomi howled, leaping for the cackling Joker again, swords at the ready. "You cut my scenes out again! You keep doing it on purpose!"

"Puddin'!" Sailor Uranus whined while trying to restrain her from behind, having to make full use of her superhuman strenght. "Please stop teasing her! Give her a lemon scene or something, already!"


End file.
